Did You Know?
-The area of Charles Street north of the Washinbgton Monument is a recycled road.

In the early 1970’s William Donald Schaefer developed a program of paving Baltimore streets with a mix of recycled glass and asphalt. He reported coming up with the idea after seeing “Glassphalt” used in California.  Local manufacturers provided the city with crushed glass waste and the result was actually cheaper than standard paving material.

More streets were planned to be paved with Glassphalt, but by the 1980’s paving companies put notable pressure on city government and glass manufacturers found more profitable ways to eliminate their glass waste and the program was stopped.

The recycled portion of Charles Street has far exceeded the normal 20 year life span of regular paving and Schaeffer states, "If I had to do it all over again, I'd do most of the streets in the city of Baltimore with Glassphalt.”


For the full article of this summary of Charles Cohen’s article written for the Baltimore Citypaper – CLICK HERE.