The new de-icing product, GeoMelt, would use less salt than other methods of de-icing roads. (Photo by Lester Graham)
There’s been rising concern in recent years over the environmental impact of
road salt. The salt helps melt ice on the roads, but it corrodes cars and
damages bridges and concrete. Now, there’s a new way to help de-ice
roadways, and it comes from sugar beets. Dustin Dwyer reports:
Transcript
There’s been rising concern in recent years over the environmental impact of
road salt. The salt helps melt ice on the roads, but it corrodes cars and
damages bridges and concrete. Now, there’s a new way to help de-ice
roadways, and it comes from sugar beets. Dustin Dwyer reports:
The product is called GeoMelt, and it mixes with a salt brine to drop the freezing point
along roads. This method uses less salt than the traditional way of de-icing roads.
Chris Duffy is a GeoMelt salesman. He says it’s essentially de-sugared sugar beet
molasses. And it doesn’t require any new chemical processes:
“It’s considered a co-product of the sugar process. And, you know, what they were using
it for was a cattle feed. And we just have come up with a different use for it.”
GeoMelt also helps cut the amount of salt washing onto farmland where it can ruin crops.
Duffy says thousands of cities in every northern state are now using the sugar beet-based
product.
For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.