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City's Use of 'Poticrete' Diverts Tons of Material from Landfill

By Wynne Parry

Credit: Freeman Anthony

A road construction project in Bellingham, WA, used an unusual recycled material to make a section of sidewalk: crushed toilets.

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    The city used crushed porcelain to replace roughly one dump truck load of gravel to make concrete for a section of sidewalk as part of the Meador Kansas Ellis Trail project.

    (Freeman Anthony)

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March 12, 2012 Updated Mar 12, 2012 at 2:10 PM PDT

(LiveScience) What do you do with 5 tons of old toilets? The city of Bellingham, Washington, found a creative (and sustainable) answer: Make sidewalk.

A section of a sidewalk installed as part of a road improvement project replaces conventional concrete with so-called "poticrete," which contains crushed porcelain instead of gravel.

The pieces of old toilets, crushed into three-quarter inch pieces, replaces about one dump-truck load of gravel, which would otherwise come out of a hillside somewhere, and saves about 5 tons of material — the toilets — from a landfill, according to project engineer Freeman Anthony.

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