Hillebrand Breuker, innovator at the Province of North Holland, came up with the idea of de-icing roads with grass juice. “Grass has many purposes”, he says. “You can press it, to get juice and fibers. The fibers can be used to produce paper for instance. One day I noticed that the juice from grass was quite salt. I thought: I should do something with that. And that’s how Grass2Grit started.”
In 2017 a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) was executed. Conclusion: there is a lot of potential. Especially because of the local character of the project, the LCA showed that the end-products are ecologically sound and good for the environment. In 2018 the project received a EU LIFE-subsidy in the category ‘environment and efficient use of resources’. With this the pilot project can be executed from 2018 – 2022. Further expansion in Europe is one of the goals of Grass2Grit.