A RMIT University-led project – supported by the Australian Research Council, Austroads and 10 Victorian councils – will incorporate recycled plastic from consumer and industrial waste, including notoriously stubborn soft plastics, into asphalt as a performance enhancer at ten sites across Victoria.

With Australians generating 2.6 million tonnes of plastic waste each year and landfill space expected to reach capacity by 2025, this project is helping to address an urgent challenge.

Project lead, RMIT Associate Professor Filippo Giustozzi, says the team will also produce best-practice guidelines on the use of recycled plastics in asphalt roads.

“These guidelines will enable local governments, which control 80% of the nation’s roads, to begin widescale adoption of this innovative recycling solution,” says Giustozzi from RMIT’s School of Engineering.

The City of Melbourne and nine suburban and regional councils will lead the way, each having sections of recycled road up to 900 metres long paved over coming months.

The 10 project sites will use an estimated 21,000 kg of recycled plastic, but the potential scale of this solution is considerable given the several hundred thousand kilometres of roads across Australia, Giustozzi says.

“If Australia’s 537 local governments each used a small amount of recycled plastic in the many roads they resurface each year, then nationally we’ll have created a large end-market for recycled plastic.”

"The performance of roads can actually be improved with the additions of recycled material, such as plastic and rubber, to be more durable against traffic and resistant against ageing,” Giustozzi says.

Along with Austroads, the collaboration includes Australia’s leading pavement authorities and specialists, including public works and building bodies, recyclers, and contractors.

It will be coordinated under the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Transformation of Reclaimed Waste Resources to Engineered Materials and Solutions for a Circular Economy (TREMS).

Local government areas involved in the project include City of Melbourne, Banyule, Bayside, Moonee Valley, Hobsons Bay, Baw Baw, Latrobe, Casey, Mornington Peninsula and Wyndham.

Image: Supplied

Branko Miletic

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