Lower Volume Roads
- Ecobond DuraGrav can halve the maintenance costs of SA’s gravel road network. Add Ecobond into the water truck during re-graveling, level, compact and spray. This incurs almost no extra construction costs and the wearing course can last twice as long as an untreated surface with occasional re-sprays maintenance and no grading.
- The improved cohesion reduces erosion, dust and skidding, requires fewer borrow pits and reduces carbon emissions and costs. Road users get a much improved and safer driving surface as a bonus.
- Construction is easy and similar to re-gravelling and can create many more jobs. Simply add Ecobond into the water spray truck during re-gravelling.
Mines
Additional Information
- Ecobond SprayOn controls dust effectively at low cost. Spray Ecobond/ water solution twice instead of water 28 times per week saving water, vehicle operating costs and allowing haulage trucks to operate faster. Ecobond reacts chemically with the soil strengthening the surface, reducing erosion and dust effectively. Ecobond does not leach out and builds up cumulatively with each respray reducing future spray costs.
- Mixed-in Ecobond DuraGravmine haul roads are more durable and need fewer maintenance sprays at lower cost.
- Ecobond containment technology and water applications reduce the cost of mine closures while providing sustainable long term solutions to communities. Ecobond membranes keep imported clean soils separate from polluted soils and Ecobond rainwater harvesting provides communities with cleaner water for farming and if purified for drinking.
Rain Water Harvesting
- S.A. receives 500 trillion litres of rain per year but very little is directly used. Harvest rain where it falls by spraying Ecobond onto a cleared slope. The rainwater then does not penetrate into the soil but runs off lower down.
- Store this water in an Ecobond lined pond or guide it with Ecobond treated channels to crops or livestock or rivers and dams which then fill sooner (e.g. for Cape Town drought spray road shoulders, etc. above existing drainage systems.)
- Catching the rain where it falls enables rural families and unemployed persons in townships to create their own jobs, food and income. This makes land in arid and normal areas more usable, profitable and more valuable.
Waste Water Treatment
- 80% of all sewage in the world is untreated because of the high cost of treating it. Ecobond in situ soil treated ponds can help to relieve this huge problem.
- Evaporation ponds at mines can cost less using Ecobond pond linings.
- Ecobond containment technology can confine pollutants until treated.
Ecobond Membranes
- Reduce or eliminate the biggest risk of farming – dry spells and droughts - which can decimate yields from crops or livestock farming. Spray Ecobond onto a cleared slope to let the rainwater run-off and not penetrate into the soil (most soft rain presently goes into soft soil.) Then remove say 400mm soil lower than this harvest area to one side and treat the exposed surface with an Ecobond membrane. Replace the soil and plant the crops. Rainwater then seeps down through the soil near the roots above this membrane with very little evaporation. Moisture stays near the roots that cannot use it if seeps too far down. This membrane keeps salts in brackish areas below the membrane to not affect crop yields. Livestock and people’s digestive systems are also badly affected by too much salt instead of sweet rainwater.
- These Ecobond systems allow farming with very little water which makes sustainable and profitable farming possible with consistent water in normal and even dry areas.
- This counters climate change and can reduce or reverse migration to cities and can allow many to create their own jobs, food and income and prosper, also indirectly in adjacent value chains.
Other Uses
Ecobond can provide many other benefits of strong, water resistant soil. It can help to control erosion, mud, vegetation, evaporation, fire damage to fences or properties, dust, temperature, moisture, pollutants, insulation, etc. It can stabilize fence posts, wetlands, embankments, support foundations, paths, road shoulders, potholes, parking lots, hard stands and make bricks, blocks, tiles, mortar, plaster, floors, cast walls, etc. and many more.
7.2 One can engineer with what we often have for free or at low cost in front of us: soil (including the plant food in topsoil), rain, gravity, labour, seeds in nature and for farming, livestock breeding, sun, wind, etc. and sustainably improve conditions like health and wealth for many directly and indirectly. This increases income to voters and taxes to governments providing an excellent return for decades in future. Ecobond can significantly improve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
Ecobond has been certified by Agrement SA and has acquired patent rights in various countries.
