Hasta La Ideas

We’re saving these pickles for the end, but you can skip ahead if you must.

…the slush-caked roads of the Greater Tri-state Area, that is. (Ok, that was a really cheesy, but take the puns with a grain of salt. You’ve been warned.)

We Polar Vortexans have been experiencing some technical difficulties lately. Unlike the proverbial perambulating pretzels, the roads are not getting a-salted, and it’s a kind of a problem. Many of the hardest-hit states in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. are running low on sodium, and Quartz notes that they may have to turn to an arguably less savory solution, such as “cheese brine and other dairy waste products.”

Indeed, Gizmodo picked up on Modern Farmer‘s report on the win-win waste disposal practice last November. The smell, apparently, is an issue (though ’tis the season for nasal congestion anyway), but it’s definitely a creative whey to solve two problems at once.

L: Lotsa Mozza; R: More on Milwaukee’s industrial-strength cheese grater at the Journal-Sentinel.

Of course, cheese runoff is just one of the upcycled waste products that the National Geographic examines in their alt-de-icer round-up, which concludes with some DIY (De-Ice-Yourself, duh) tips. “You can easily try the brine or juice methods. Combine salt with molasses or beet juice from your grocery store, or that green liquid in pickle jars. Mix it all up, pour it into a spray bottle, and spray away. If all goes well, you will achieve maximum meltage with minimal salt.”

Lo and behold, the folks across the Hudson had turned to last of those options, so to speak, some three years ago. As early as 2011, certain municipalities in northern New Jersey were substituting in “a briny mixture of salt and water that resembles pickle juice” for NaCl (a recipe for dis-ice-ter, if you will). At seven cents a gallon, it’s difficult to determine how much money they’ll save on $63/ton salt, not least because it’s not clear how much of each it takes to deice, say, a mile of road. (According to the Times, NYC’s Sanitation Department started the season with 250K tons of road salt and have used 346,112 tons so far; more on the cost savings below).

In any case, the CBS reporter’s attempt is decidedly non-superlative:

Bergen County? More like gherkin county.

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