dws-kws-asphalt-cellulose-ijburg-770pxAmsterdam is the first municipality in the Netherlands with a road that has been paved with noise-reducing asphalt that includes recycled toilet paper.

Road constructor KWS used the cellulose from recycled toilet paper to improve the handling characteristics of the asphalt. The cellulose reduces the dripping of the bitumen.

The cellulose had been supplied by Cellvation that runs a filter installation at a sewage treatment plant just north of Amsterdam. A fine sieve screen separation technology is used to recover toilet paper from the incoming sewage water.

dws-kws-asphalt-cellulose-350px-1  Cellulose as recovered from sewage water and prccessed by Cellvation into a high quality product for the construction and chemical industry.

Sustainability in road constructions
Pepijn Kok, Managing Director of KWS Infra Amsterdam-Heerhugowaard explains: ‘Together with our clients, we strive for more applications of sustainable innovations. The 'upgrading' of toilet paper to a drip inhibitor for our asphalt is a good example of this.’

Alderman Marieke van Doorninck of Amsterdam emphasises the value that her city ads to circular building is great. ‘I think this is a very good example that symbolizes the circular economy. If we can even recycle toilet paper for new applications, it shows that we no longer have to consider anything as waste and can reuse everything.‘

dws-kws-asphalt-cellulose-fine-sieve-cirtec-350pxFour fine sieves at a Dutch wwtp as the first step in the Cellvation process.

First application
Every year 180,000 tons of toilet paper is flushed down in toilets in the Netherlands. At some Dutch municipal waste water treatment plants fine sieves have been placed to separate the paper - the cellulose - from the incoming sewage water.

The first application of such recovered cellulose in the Netherlands was in 2016 when it was successfully used in the asphalt for the pavement of a cycle path.

The application in the noise-reducing asphalt in the road pavement in Amsterdam is a next step.

Large scale recovery
Supplier Cellvation specialises in scaling up the recovery of used toilet paper world wide and bringing collected cellulose to the market as high quality products. Potential products are aggregates in the construction Industry, insulating materials and plastics.

Cellvation is a joint venture of KNN Cellulose and CirTec.

This news item is based on the publicaton of a news release on the website of KWS (in Dutch only).

Read also on this website
ReCirc Singapore aims at joint development of resource recovery technology for circular economy, 19 December 2017
AIWW 2017: Cellvation wins Aquatech Innovation Award for recovery of toilet paper, 1 November 2017
PlasticRoad selected as finalist for INDEX Award 2017, 20 June 2017
Expertise: Water technology

More information
KWS/Volker Wessels
Vianen, the Netherlands
+31 347 35 73 00
www.kws.nl
and www.volkerwessels.com

Cellvation
Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
+31 299 792 080
www.cell-vation.nl/en

Impression of the paving of the road in Amsterdam where recovered toilet paper was used (Dutch spoken).