How good are American roads?

I heard a civil engineer make a claim once that the dust on the side of the road is about 300% more laden with precious metals like platinum, than random mining. I suppose this is all roads and not just American roads, though.

Isn’t it supposed to be mostly brake pads, rotors, and tire rubber?

Would be fascinating to imagine it being economically viable to vacuum up and reprocess it, but based on the above I’ve assumed it was worthless.

Sounds a bit like the guys that collect the sludge from the sewers in jewellery and gold smithing districts in cities, then pan it for gold. Its not going to make anyone rich, but theres enough gold dust in there to buy some food and shoes for somebody hungry enough to dive into a sewer and collect sludge!

Supermarkets that make you put in a quarter to take a shopping cart are really just paying the homeless $0.25 each to return them from the parking lot.

Cody's Lab did a video with some experiments collecting and refining road dust. As I recall, he did manage to obtain a small bead of platinum-group metals but it didn't appear to be economically viable at least at a small scale.

Dust from the catalytic converter. I've heard of gangs in LA taking shopvacs to the shoulder of the freeway at night.

Doing a public service, there.

It seems more like the customers are paying the homeless, and the supermarkets are just acting as brokers.

Pics or it didn’t happen. I’ll even accept AI slop if its well crafted.

it's the same for bottle deposits in parts of Europe. anything in a plastic bottle costs an extra ~10c which you can retrieve by depositing the empty in a machine at the supermarket

in the UK, trolley deposits are much more expensive, at £1. people are more likely to retrieve a £1 than a quarter, but the atomic payout is ~5x higher, so I wonder which scenario yields better pay for the homeless

Quick attempt:

https://ibb.co/DYVtXz2

Pretty good, have an upvote.

Doesn't pass sanity check. They would run street sweepers if anything.

And surface roads with stop and go would have a higher density of particles in the "go" places (like beyond lights).

But if the gangs can make money doing it why wouldn't the municipalities do it?

Yes, it's copper and other metals used in the brake pads, as well as tire dust. Rotors are mostly just cast iron, so I'm not sure how bad that is.

Ay, look at my homies get it done!

I mean ultimately the goal is to find a balance where carts won’t be everywhere and customers aren’t inconvenienced to the point of choosing a different store.

I mean either way carts aren't gonna be everywhere, and I don't think pounds have ever been a problem for shoppers in the UK