City Saving Over $400 Grand By Recycling Street Sand

Looks like Barrie’s Roads Department is getting in on the Waste Department’s turf. A presentation at City Hall Monday night, highlighting the results of a pilot program that saw the city recycle much of the sand put down on the roads in winter. The pilot program saw about 3,600 tonnes of street sand recycled and $438,000 saved. The city would have had to spend over seven hundred thousand bucks to dispose of the old sand and buy new stuff, but in filtering and reusing acceptable sand, the bill only came to $187,000. Not all sand gets reused, as some of it does fall below provincial standards once it’s used. But after filtering out the unusable stuff, around 75% of road sand can be reused with no loss of traction, according to Monday evening’s presentation. Last year, the city used 7,400 tonnes of sand on Barrie streets last winter, and of the 4,137 tonnes reclaimed in the spring, only 741 tonnes were thrown away.