Sustainable road materials project looking for municipal partners

The Low Carbon Transportation Materials (LCTM) Program, established through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, offers up to $800 million in federal funding to promote the use of sustainable construction materials in steel, asphalt, glass and concrete with lower carbon emissions in transportation projects.

The city of Kansas City, Missouri, is currently piloting a program to use plastic shopping bags and old tires — two hard-to-dispose-of materials — and putting them into roadway asphalt. Project leaders have found that ingredients from the tires are complimentary to the durability of the asphalt when mixed into it.

The city aims to scale this program for future road projects, and project partners want other area governments to know about this opportunity.