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Jakarta’s public works agency hopes to start an environmentally friendly and more cost-effective asphalt-recycling scheme this year, an agency head said on Tuesday.

Instead of tearing up badly worn roads and discarding the material, the used asphalt would be recycled for use in new roadwork projects, saving as much of 25 percent of the cost of resurfacing a road with new material.

Budi Widiantoro, head of the public works agency, said his department had submitted a revised 2009 budget in order to make an early start on the new system, which was originally planned for 2010.

“We’ve asked for an extra Rp. 39 billion [$3.8 million] for that,” he said.

The initial set-up cost would be for central hot-plant recycling (CHR) system that dredges and prepares old asphalt for re-use.

Budi said that while waiting for the City Council to approve the proposal, his agency was ready to open the tender process.

“If the budget is available in August, we can get the system up and running in September,” he said.

Budi said the roads that would use the recycled asphalt were still to be decided.

“We will implement the system in all five administration areas, but the roads chosen will depend on their present condition,” he said, adding that some roads would be chosen based on their unsuitability for conventional re-layering.

Based on the agency’s studies, the new system would be about 25 percent cheaper overall than conventional road repair methods.

Material costs for the conventional system have been running at about Rp 765 million per year, while the CHR materials are projected to cost about Rp 511 million, a saving of 32 percent. Labor costs for the CHR method are expected to be 5 percent lower.

However, setting up the more sophisticated recycling technology would require an increase in funding over that needed for the conventional system.

The cost for the CHR system’s equipment is estimated to cost Rp 223 million per year, while conventional equipment usually runs at Rp 217 million annually.

The new technology would be able to produce 100,000 tons of recycled asphalt per year.

The city’s recycling plan is based on a similar scheme used in Central Java, which first implemented the CHR system in 2007 on the road between Semarang and Pekalongan.