As part of Dorset Council’s ‘green’ approach to highways maintenance, road retexturing is contributing to a reduction in emissions.

Working with WJ Textureblast, the council has refreshed 67,000sqm of road surface this year – raising skid resistance to improve the safety of highway.

Where appropriate, the sustainable solution eliminates the need to resurface a road and instead uses one of two techniques to blast the road surface to regain its skid resistance to the same – or better – level of resistance it had when the material was first laid.

Depending on the individual site, the road will either have small steel shots fired at the surface to improve the texture or will have water blasted at the surface to remove 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 also has financial savings of over £1.2m compared to using conventional resurfacing methods to provide a new textured surface.

Cllr Ray Bryan, 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.”

Road retexturing is also more convenient for the travelling public, as roads can remain open during the treatment.