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The city of Vancouver in British Columbia has found a creative use for used plastic bottles. It鈥檚 building roads with them.

The city announced earlier this month that its city staffers have created the first-ever warm mix asphalt system that utilizes post-consumer recycled plastic. With the help of shampoo bottles, milk jugs and yogurt containers – plastics that are difficult to recycle 鈥� staffers have found a way to use a plastic-based waxen material that can be added to asphalt mixes and reduce their environmental impact.

The city is working with a company called of Toronto, B.C., which developed the technology to create the wax material. In asphalt, the plastic additive reduces viscosity and makes paving easier at lower temperatures.

That in turn results in a 20 percent reduction in the gas needed to heat the mix and improves emissions 鈥� 30 percent less volatile organic compounds; 20 percent less carbon monoxide. The process carries a 3 percent premium, but the city expects that to disappear as fuel prices rise.

While it鈥檚 still in trial, the mix has proven so far to improve performance in asphalt because it does not overheat the liquid asphalt. Other benefits are that the process requires less virgin asphaltic oils and it creates the potential to grind and re-use the pavement (the wax helps prevent the aging of the asphaltic oils).

Peter Judd, general manager of engineering for the city of Vancouver, said the hope is to attract a company like GreenMantra to refine the plastics locally.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 really want to be shipping all those recyclable plastics to Ontario to have them refined and shipped back,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here are plenty of plastics in the region where, presumably, that process could be used for.鈥�

Judd said the city of Vancouver alone could use up to 40 tons of the waxen material each year just for asphalt paving. But demand may go up in 2014 when an effort called the Extended Producer Responsibility Program goes into effect. It requires all producers of printed paper and packaging to be responsible for the collection and recycling of the materials they produce.

Judd said the transfer of that burden is expected to save the city of Vancouver $9 million a year. The plastic refining process, Judd said, also has applications beyond asphalt, and could create many jobs if it gets adequate buy-in.

鈥淚f other cities and paving companies in the region started using it, it would ramp it up that much more,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o we hope we鈥檙e able to stimulate interest in other asphalt producers and in a company that can do the conversion of the plastic into the wax that we need.鈥�