Alternative Driveway De-Icing Tips
When you’re driving down your driveway during the winter, you come to appreciate the salt on the road. It gives the road some texture and prevents water from freezing and creating black ice, which can cause horrific car accidents. However, did you ever think about where that salt goes once it melts the ice and what affect it has on the environment? Scientists say that the salt on inland roads can have a negative impact that reaches all the way out to the oceans.
In Ankeny, Iowa, they are using garlic salt. Although it’s still salt, it was salt that would have been wasted. Tone Brothers, Inc., a spice company, donated 18,000 pounds of garlic salt, which would have been sent to a landfill. Chicago took a more eco-conscious approach by combining beet juice with their rock salt. This enables them to use less salt on the roads. Beet juice can still de-ice the roads when it’s about zero degrees, but the rock salt is limited at 20 degrees.
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ARB
Beat juice is a horrible deicer. Sticky, smelly, and does not have reliable consistancy, since all it is, is the waste from a beat canning factory. A good product to mix with standard rock salt, that makes the salt up to 50% more effective at deicing and colder temps, and therefore you need only about half as much salt is Salt Saver, by Icex Products.