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Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is road testing a new way to keep winter roads ice-free – by spreading on them cheese brine, the salty liquid used to make soft cheese, like mozzarella.

Wisconsin, also called "America's Dairyland," is famous for its cheese. The state produced 2.8 billion pounds of cheese last year! a result, there was a lot of leftover cheese brine. Disposing of(处置)the brine can be expensive. So what should cheese makers do with the waste?

Normally, towns use rock salt to de-ice streets. The salt lowers waters' freezing point, causing ice to melt(融化). But using cheese brine could help both cheese producers and cities save money, while keeping roads safe. Cheese brine has salt in it, which, like the rock salt, helps lower water's freezing point.

In addition to saving money, cheese brine could also be a more environment-friendly option. Many people suspect that all the rock salt used every winter is harming the environment.

Rock salt is made of sodium chloride, the sane con-pound (化合物)in ordinary table salt. Sounds harmless, right? But while you probably add only a small amount of salt to your food, road crews spread about 20 million tons of salt on U.S. Roads every year!

The chemical washes off roads and goes into the ground. There it can pollute drinking water, harm plants. and eat away soil. By spreading cheese brine on streets before adding a layer of rock salt, Milwaukee may be able to cut its rock salt use by 30 percent.

Cheese brine has a downside too – a shell similar to that of bad milk. "I don't really mind it," Emil Norby told Modern Farmer magazine. He works for one of Wisconsin's county highway commissions and came up with the idea of using cheese brine. "Our roads smell like Wisconsin!" he said.