PubMed · 2026-06-03
Researchers found that salt-tolerant grasses growing along roadsides can absorb road salt from contaminated soil, and that chloride can then be efficiently washed out of the harvested plant material and potentially reused — creating a circular system that reduces the need for new salt purchases.
Active leaching recovered nearly 100% of chloride from harvested grass biomass using four times less water than passive rinsing, which only removed up to 70%.
Halophyte stands could recover an estimated 4–21 grams of chloride per square meter per year — comparable to the amount applied in a single winter road salt treatment.
This is the first study to demonstrate a scalable method for reclaiming road salt from phytoremediation biomass, with pathways to integrate into existing vegetation management infrastructure.
