Beet juice beats salt

(NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Each winter season, snowplows dump tons of salt on the roads with each passing storm. But, is there a better way to fight the ice and snow piling up on West Michigan roads?

The answer may be found in a new ice fighting concoction called Geomelt. But, it's what's inside the bottle that may surprise you.

Geomelt uses extract from a common vegetable, the beet. In Elkhart, Indiana, they've been using it with their salt and sand mixture for the last five years. The mixture soaks in beet juice.

“It's a sugar beet derivative, after they remove the sugar from a sugar beet,” says Elkhart's street commissioner, Marty Morgan.

It turns out that the gooey-brown mess is nature's natural ice melter.

“You wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe it. But, yeah, it works really well,” says Morgan.

They began using the product experimentally five years ago. It has proven so successful that the city now goes through 9,000 gallons a year.

Elkhart is not the only city using the product. Geomelt's distributor counts more than 500 communities as clients across the Midwest.

Regional manager Rod Waltman became a believer after his local road commissioner gave it a shot. “About 30 minutes to an hour later we had a wet road. I've never seen a wet road that fast,” said Waltman.

Unlike traditional salt, which loses its effectiveness around 15 degrees, a load treated with beet juice works to 30 below. Because it is thicker than other treatments, it lasts longer.

“It actually sticks into the grooves of the asphalt or concrete and then all you have to do is plow it off. You don't have to keep treating it over and over,” says Morgan.

Geomelt is also completely organic and water soluble. “It came from a plant. So, how much more environmentally friendly can you get than that?” says Waltman.

But there is a cost. Elkhart spends about twice as much on Geomelt than salt brine, but, Marty Morgan says that's deceiving.

“It costs a little more, but in the long run, it saves us a lot of money because we don't have to keep applying material on it,” says Morgan.

Morgan also states that it is easier on equipment, less salt means less rust.

“It's not corrosive at all,” Morgan claims.

But, does it really work? After following Elkhart's crews as they hit the roads, in about a half an hour, we saw streets go from ice to slush.

But what about in West Michigan?

We asked drivers spraying away the salt what they thought of using beets, to beat the snow and ice.

“It's good, they're trying to use other stuff besides salt because salt is horrible,” says local driver, Rush McDaniel.

And, while there are other products out there, Waltman believes that Geomelt is the future of ice melt. Simply put, he says Geomelt can't be beat.

“They've tried beer broth, pickle juice. You do a little google search, you'll find out there's been all kinds of products tried to see if it can be as good as the beet juice. Corn was about half as good,” says Waltman.

Some cities here in West Michigan already use the beet juice. They include Mattawan, Western Michigan University in Kalmazoo, and Sturgis where the the head of public services says the juice allows them to cut the amount of salt they use in half.