A waste product from the cellulose industry can improve gravel or dirt roads in an environmentally friendly way, says an industrial technology agency in Argentina. Sodium lignosulfonate, a byproduct obtained from paper pulp in which sulfite and sodium carbonate are utilized to separate the lignin from the wood, is then mixed with the water used to wet down the gravel roads of farms in the southern Argentine province of Río Negro.

In consultation with the Río Negro municipality of Cipolletti, the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) found that the lignosulfonate reduces the risk of road washouts and prevents dust clouds.

And “it is not a contaminant and has great combining strength,” Angel Casabona, an INTI engineer from Cipolletti, told Tierramérica.