DORSET Council has reduced carbon emissions involved with road maintenance by over 335,000kg thanks to a new technique.

The council has shifted from resurfacing roads to 'retexturing' them, where appropriate, in order to enhance the safety of the surface.

The sustainable solution removes the need to resurface a road and used a technique to blast the road surface in order to regain its skid resistance to the same - or better - level it had when the road was first laid.

WJ Textureblast has worked with the council to 'refresh' 67,000sqm of road surface this year by using two methods depending on the needs of each individual road.

One method sees small steel shots fired at the surface in order to improve the texture whilst the other sees water blasted at the surface in order to remove any excess binder.

This road retexturing has helped reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by over 335,000kg, and saved around 6,700 tonnes of virgin aggregates from being used.

It has also delivered financial savings of over £1.2m compared to using conventional resurfacing methods to provide a new textured surface.

Cllr Ray Bryan, Dorset Council Portfolio Holder for Highways, Travel and Environment, said: “We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and embedding our climate and ecological emergency response work in all that we do.

“Using retexturing to refresh skid resistance rather than replacing the surface is a good example of how making small changes in the way we do things can lessen on our impact on the environment and take us closer to our net-zero target.”

Nigel Savage, Managing Director for WJ Textureblast, said: “We have been working with Dorset for over ten years, and it’s great to see the benefits we continue to bring to the area’s road network. This year, we have been proud to show the level of carbon savings that can be achieved through the use of retexturing, when compared to resurfacing.”

It comes as Dorset Council highways service has completed its annual surface dressing programme, with 96-miles of road treated in the months between April and August.