Discovery Park center to research safe conversion of spent railroad ties to new high-value products

The U.S. rail system retires approximately 21 million railroad ties each year, and utility companies annually remove 2 million wooden poles from circulation, resulting in upward of 6 million tons of chemically treated wood waste. Repurposing used ties and poles into new value-added materials could significantly reduce waste and bring other benefits to the environment. Now, researchers at the Center for the Environment (C4E) in Purdue’s Discovery Park will investigate this possibility in collaboration with the newly formed Repurposing Carbon Consortium.