Giustozzi Filippo (Orcid ID: 0000-0002-6956-4686)

Title

Recent advances in the construction of sustainable asphalt roads with recycled plastic

Authors

Marie Enfrin1 , Filippo Giustozzi1*

Affiliations
1 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Civil Engineering and Infrastructure,

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Corresponding author

A/Prof. Filippo Giustozzi (filippo.giustozzi@rmit.edu.au); phone: +61 3 9925 2035

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been
through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process which may lead to
differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi:
10.1002/pi.6405
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Abstract

Although various polyolefins have intermittently been used for making roads since the 1980s,

the recycling of plastic waste into roads raises new challenges related to the production,

performance and durability of plastic-modified asphalt. This review critically discusses the

challenges of incorporating recycled plastics into bitumen/asphalt in terms of plastic selection,

chemical compatibility, long-term performance and potential contributions to fuming,

microplastic pollution and contaminant leaching. Recent advances in the field are also

presented and recommendations for future work to address current research and industrial gaps

are suggested. Challenges related to the construction of plastic roads include the wide

variability in the plastic composition and its properties after recycling, which not only affect

the successful incorporation of plastic in bitumen but also impact the mechanical properties

and environmental impact of the roads. The lack of representative testing procedures prevents

an accurate understanding of the short- and long-term performance of plastic roads in real

conditions and the contribution of plastic roads to fuming and microplastics release remains

unclear. However, promising laboratory-based procedures have been developed to benchmark

the release of PAHs and VOCs, as well as microplastics, from recycled plastic-modified asphalt

against conventional polymer-modified asphalts. Standards are still required to facilita te

bitumen/asphalt modification by recycled plastics, meet the needs of bitumen/asp ha lt

manufacturers and convince local authorities to foster the construction of plastic roads if proven

to be a sustainable practice.

Key words: recycled plastic; roads; bitumen; asphalt; microplastics

1 Context

Environmental concerns about plastic pollution have grown over the past decade, with a

worldwide amount of plastic released in the environment of 302 million tons (Mt) in 2015,

with only 62 Mt recycled and 15 Mt incinerated [1]. Although the best plastic waste disposal

and management practices are found in developed countries, exportation of plastic waste to

developing countries is still common since it is cost effective [2]. This plastic waste global

trade flow was abruptly reduced by China in 2017 when foreign garbage imports of 24 types

of solid trash were prohibited, including plastic materials [3]. The main objective was to stop

the annual importation of 8.8 million tons of plastic waste to the country and mitiga te

mismanagement issues and resulting environmental impacts [3]. Hence, domestic plastic waste

treatment and recycling have become a priority for many countries whose plastic waste trade

pattern was disturbed by the Chinese ban [2, 3].

Among the 302 Mt of plastic waste produced worldwide in 2015, 141 Mt originated from

plastic packaging, such as those used for food and drinks, personal care goods or chemical and

industrial products [4]. The short lifespan of plastic packaging resulted in an excessive amount

of waste compared to plastics coming from the textile (42 Mt), healthcare and pharmaceutic a l

(37 Mt), construction (13 Mt), electronics (13 Mt) and transport (17 Mt) sectors [4]. The main

constituents of plastic waste generated globally in 2015 were poly(ethylene) PE (32 %),

poly(propylene) PP (18 %), and poly(ethylene terephthalate) PET (11 %) [1, 4], which are

heavily used in the packaging industry to produce items such as stretch films, bottles,

containers, pouches, cutlery or food trays [5]. Recycling plastic packaging waste is a complex

process due to the occurrence of multilayer packaging materials and the contamination of

plastics by food residues [6], resulting in more than 69 % of plastic packaging waste being

landfilled in the US in 2018 [7].

 Repurposing unrecyclable plastic waste into construction materials can be a promising

solution to tackle plastic pollution, not only by reducing the amount of plastic going to landfills

or being incinerated but also by improving the performance of current construction materia ls

[8, 9]. Virgin resins such as ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and styrene butadiene styrene (SBS)

have long been used as bitumen modifiers to successfully produce high-performance polymer-

modified asphalt pavements [10, 11]. Due to their superior mechanical and thermal properties

as well as their low cost, recycled thermoplastic resins, such as PE, PP and PET, among others,

are now considered new cost-effective road modifier materials [8, 12, 13]. Although virgin

thermoplastics have successfully been used in bituminous materials [10], the overall

sustainability, feasibility and environmental impact of using recycled plastic waste in asphalt

pavements are still under debate among the scientific community [10, 14]. Economic benefits

are indeed limited by the low cost of virgin materials and the amount of plastic that can be

incorporated in roads due to asphalt production and road performance constraints. The potential

leaching of hazardous contaminants present in plastic and the release of microplastics in the

environment must also be controlled to ensure that the sustainability of using recycled plastic

in roads is maintained.

The aim of this review is to discuss current advances and challenges in the reuse of recycled

plastic into paving materials in terms of plastic selection and compatibility with

bitumen/asphalt and to offer potential solutions to tackle issues related to the long- term

performance, safety and environmental impact of plastic roads.

2 ‘Road-grade’ recycled plastics

2.1 Typical characteristics of recycled plastics

Repurposing recycled plastics into construction materials is challenging due to the

variability of their properties compared to virgin plastics, specifically in terms of compositio n,

rheological and thermal behaviour, which depend on the plastic waste source [15].

The physical properties of post-consumer (PC) recycled plastics, such as density,

melting point, degradation temperature and viscosity, can significantly vary between batches

due to the recycling processes adopted, the presence of multiple streams of plastics in PC waste,

such as PE, PP, PET, PVC, and PS, and the presence of fillers, such as carbon black, clay or

calcium carbonate [16] (Figure 1). Such residues can be found in recycled PC plastics obtained

from waste containing multilayer packaging since separating thin layers of plastics, paper and

metal is a complex process [17]. For instance, the melt flow index (MFI) of a recycled LDPE

source containing 15% fillers is 1.07 g/10 min at 190 °C and a density of 1.01 g/cm3 , whereas

the MFI of its virgin counterpart is 1.69 g/10 min at 190 °C with a density of 0.91 [18]. DSC

analysis of a comingled plastic source showed four different melting points at 108, 125, 161

and 239 °C due to the presence of LDPE, LLDPE, PP and PET in the plastic material [18].

Hazardous non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) can also be found in PC recycled

plastics due to additive leaching or contact with other waste-containing pollutants, such as

flame retardants, phthalates or heavy metals, that can cross contaminate the plastic materia ls

during their disposal and recycling [19, 20]. Other NIAS include polymerization side products

originating from the plastic manufacturing process as well as breakdown products released

from the degradation of plastic additives during manufacturing and recycling [21]. The

presence of NIAS in PC recycled plastics is unpredictable since their concentration and nature

can significantly vary between plastic sources depending on their composition, manufactur ing

and recycling process [21]. To a lesser extent, NIAS may also be found in recycled plastics
obtained from industrial waste streams, referred to as post-industrial (PI) plastics made of only

one or two different plastics with limited contamination by external pollutants.

These chemicals are concerning if the plastics are used to build roads since their exposure to

temperatures up to 180 °C during the production of bitumen can trigger the desorption of these

hazardous compounds and expose workers to toxic substances.

Figure 1. a) FTIR analysis of a recycled post-consumer plastic, b) DSC analysis of the same

recycled post-consumer plastic and c) variation in elastic modulus and MFI for different grades
and applications of HDPE, LDPE and LLDPE. Copyright © 2021, Elsevier. Adapted with

permission from [22, 23].

2.2 Challenges when mixing recycled plastics and bitumen/asphalt

The successful incorporation of recycled plastics in bitumen/asphalt to produce plastic-

modified asphalt pavements depends on the careful selection of the plastics and the

incorporation method in bitumen/asphalt [24].

2.2.1 Wet method

Low melting point plastics such as PE (Tm = 100 – 140 °C) and PP (Tm = 150 – 170 °C)

are commonly used as bitumen modifiers and incorporated via the ‘wet method’ where the

plastics are melted with hot bitumen at 160 - 180 °C before the blend is added to hot aggregates

[14]. It is crucial not to find any residues of high melting point plastics, such as PET and PS

(Tm > 200 °C), or impurities, such as paper or metal, in the recycled plastic sources to ensure

that all the plastics are evenly melted in bitumen. Such residues are commonly found in PC

recycled plastics (Figure 1a); hence, a thorough characterisation of the recycled plastic

material is required beforehand to select the most suitable plastic material for bitumen

modification.

The viscosity of plastics is important to consider since low-viscosity plastics ensure a better

dispersion in bitumen than high-viscosity plastics [14]. MFI values are commonly used to

assess the processability of plastics, where high MFI values refer to low-viscosity plastics and

low MFI values refer to high-viscosity plastics. The MFI of EVA (28% VAc), a polymer

commonly used for bitumen modification [10], is comparable to that of virgin PP at 190 °C,

7.2 and 7.5 g/10 min, respectively, whereas virgin LDPE is more viscous with an MFI at 190

°C of 1.7 g/10 min [23], showing that PP is theoretically more suitable than LDPE for bitumen

modification. However, the original plastic grade, the presence of fillers and multiple plastic
streams in recycled plastics can increase or decrease their viscosity (Figure 1c) and therefore

limit their use as bitumen modifiers if their viscosity is too high. A recent study assessed the

MFI of 31 different sources of recycled plastics and demonstrated that the MFI of PE-based

recycled plastics varied from 0.06 to 10.20 g/10 min at 19 °C, whereas virgin LLDPE, LDPE

and HDPE MFI values ranged between 2.03, 1.69 and 0.05 g/10 min, respectively [23]. The

presence of fillers and/or infrequent inclusion of PP in the PE-based recycled plastics could

explain the variability between the MFI values of the different plastic sources (Figure 1a and

b).

Finally, the compatibility between low melting point recycled plastics and bitumen must

be controlled to avoid phase separation issues during the storage of hot plastic-modified

bitumen, specifically when more than 2 wt% of recycled plastic per mass of bitumen is used

(Figure 2a and b). Semi crystalline plastics, such as PE and PP, can induce phase separation

when mixed in bitumen because the non-polar and crystalline phase of the plastics do not

disperse well in the bitumen matrix [10, 25]. A solution to prevent this phenomenon is to graft

the polymer chains to the polar asphaltene molecules of bitumen, which act as micelles in the

maltenic matrix of bitumen [14, 26] (Figure 2c). Although compatibilizers inducing chemica l

crosslinking between plastic crystals and bitumen asphaltene molecules are commercia lly

available [6, 25, 27, 28], they are not specifically designed for recycled plastics whose

composition, and therefore polarity and crystalline fraction, can vary from batch to batch.

Grafting maleic anhydride (MAH) onto recycled LDPE or PP is one of the most common ways

of reducing phase separation with bitumen [27]; however, the grafting procedure needs to be

optimised depending on the molecular weight, branching degree, polymer composition and

functionality of the plastics [27, 29, 30]. In fact, the structure of the resulting MAH-grafted

polyolefin will vary since PE chains tend to crosslink when grafted via melt free radical

polymerisation whereas PP chains are more prone to chain scission [29, 31-33]. Although
MAH is known to improve the compatibility between plastics and bitumen [27], there is

currently no universal method to graft maleic anhydride onto recycled plastics, which renders

the use of recycled plastics as bitumen modifiers more difficult. Finally, the asphaltene content

of bitumen can impact its compatibility with plastics since a higher content of asphaltenes is

likely to improve the compatibility between plastic and bitumen due to the higher number of

asphaltene molecules likely to interact with the plastics [14]. A thorough understanding of the

bitumen composition is therefore required to successfully design a suitable compatibilizer since

the asphaltene content can vary between different bitumen sources [26].

Figure 2. a) Homogenous dispersion of LDPE (bright area) in a continuous bitumen phase

(dark area) at a plastic content of 2 wt% and b) phase separation between LDPE-rich phases
(light area) and bitumen-rich phases (dark area) at a plastic content of 5 wt%. Copyright ©

2008, Elsevier. c) Schematic representation of asphaltene molecules interacting via acid-base

and hydrogen bonding (blue), metal coordination (red), hydrophobic interactions (orange) and

π-π stacking (green) Copyright © 2011, American Chemical Society. Adapted with permissio n

from [34, 35].

2.2.2 Dry and mixed methods

High melting point and amorphous plastics, such as PET and ABS, respectively, can be

used as asphalt aggregate substitutes and incorporated in asphalt via the ‘dry method’, where

plastics are mixed with hot aggregates at 150 - 160 °C before bitumen is added to the mix [14].

One of the main challenges of incorporating PET and ABS particles in asphalt mixes remains

the compaction of asphalt due to the natural viscoelastic properties of PET and ABS. The

compressive strength and elastic deformation of ABS are typically higher than those of PET

due to the presence of styrene groups in ABS [36], which explains the tendency of ABS to

expand after compaction in ABS-modified asphalt and of PET to reduce the compactability of

PET-modified asphalt when used at high contents (> 4 wt% per mass of the asphalt mix) [18].

The size and shape of these plastics must also be carefully considered because plastic particles

can only replace aggregates of the same size range and shape to ensure that the void content of

the asphalt mix is consistent with the required standards, the mixture is workable and the

durability of the asphalt is maintained [37]. Some plastic materials can come as large as chunks

(i.e. 10-15 mm), elongated particles or powders (Figure 3), which limits the use of these

plastics unless an additional processing step is performed during recycling, such as sieving or

pulverizing, to obtain the desired particle size. The hardness of the plastics used as aggregate

substitutes should also be considered to ensure that the plastic particles do not breakdown into

smaller particles when mixed with aggregates or subjected to traffic. The mechanical properties

of recycled plastics can significantly differ from those of virgin plastics due to the mechanic a l
and thermal history acquired throughout their manufacturing, use, disposal and recycling [38].

Contact with water, UV radiation and oxygen as well as exposure to high/low temperatures can

induce the oxidation, cracking and embrittlement of plastic materials, resulting in a change in

the chemical and mechanical properties of recycled plastics, which may not be suitable for

bitumen/asphalt modification [39]. Overall, incorporating recycled plastics in asphalt via the

‘dry method’ is easier from a processing point of view and up to 10-20 times more plastics can

be added into the asphalt mix compared to the ‘wet method’. However, the dry method may be

significantly affected by the plastic size and shape and obtaining a particle size distribution that

is similar to the initial aggregate gradation may be hard to achieve.

The ‘mixed method’ derives from a combination of both the ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ methods and

involves the addition of low melting point plastics to hot aggregates to form a polyole fin

coating onto the aggregates before neat bitumen is added to the mix, possibly allowing for the

diffusion of part of the plastics into bitumen [13]. The main challenges related to this method

are related to the temperature, speed and duration of the mixing phase that contribute to a

uniform dispersion of the plastic and its incorporation into the bitumen to provide a partial

polymer modification [13]. A few fundamental studies have been published to date on this

topic [13, 40, 41].

Figure 3. Recycled plastics delivered by different recycling facilities. Adapted from [18].

2.3 Recycled plastic selection criteria

A tool supporting the selection of recycled plastic sources for bitumen/asphalt modifica tio n

would be useful for recyclers to develop ‘road-grade’ plastics with dedicated production lines

for the bitumen/asphalt industry. One recent study presented a ranking tool based on eight

criteria applied to 31 different sources of recycled plastics to predict which types of recycled

plastic are more suitable for bitumen/asphalt modification and highlighted that, overall,

LDPE/LLDPE-based plastics were the most suitable, whereas comingled plastics (three or

more plastic streams) were the least appropriate, although still usable [23]. The compositio n,

chemical and physical properties of the recycled plastics were used to rank the recycled plastics

against virgin plastics and EVA, a polymer commonly used for bitumen modification, which

ranked higher than all the other plastic sources [23]. Another scoring system was recently

presented to assess the recycling quality of end-of-life plastics for a specific application based

on the plastic of interest content in the waste, the recovery of the waste management system,
the substitutability of the recycled plastic against its virgin counterpart and the market response

[22]. This scoring system could be useful for life cycle assessment (LCA) and more

fundamental studies rather than being a decision tool for recycling facilities due to the need for

data specific to each plastic assessed, such as the plastic content in the waste, its recovery and

current market response, which may not be readily and easily accessible. However, the

‘substitutability’ factor could be applied to recycled plastics for bitumen/asphalt modifica tio n

following the same principles in the eight-criterion ranking tool specifically developed for the

bitumen/asphalt sector [23]. Such tools could therefore be adopted by plastic recycling facilities

to regularly check the quality of the recycled plastic they produce and the suitability for road

applications.

3 Performance, safety and environmental impacts of plastic roads

3.1 Long-term performance

Building roads from recycled plastic is still a nascent technology worldwide due to

challenges hindering its development; hence, small stretches of plastic roads of less than 1 km

have been built in many countries as prototypes to assess the real-time performance of plastic

roads [42-45]. However, given that the oldest plastic roads built under controlled conditio ns

are less than 8 years old and that asphalt roads are built to last for 20 years, the long- term

performance of plastic roads remains unclear. Many standards are used worldwide to

empirically test bitumen and asphalt materials under laboratory conditions [46]; however, these

conditions are not necessarily representative of the real circumstances in the field. An

alternative would be to conduct accelerated pavement testing using specific facilities, such as

the Heavy Vehicle Simulator [47] or the Pavement Fatigue Carousel [48], to better represent

field scenarios. Although sensors are currently being used to test for surface and structural

changes of asphalt upon accelerated testing [49], some performance indicators cannot be

assessed via accelerated pavement testing, such as gaseous emissions when laying hot asphalt
and the release of microplastics when plastic-modified roads are open to traffic due to abrasion

exerted by vehicle tyres.

3.2 Workers safety - fuming

As a petroleum-derived product, bitumen is known to release hazardous fumes, such as

polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), when heated and

processed to build roads [50, 51]. Although the replacement of part of bitumen by recycled

plastics could decrease fuming due to preferential intermolecular interactions occurring

between fumes and plastics [52], this strategy could also contribute to further increasing the

generation of fumes since plastics are known to emit fumes when processed above their melting

temperature [53]. Plastic particles are also known to sorb VOCs and PAHs at their surface due

to their low crystallinity and hydrophobicity [54], a trend confirmed by the few studies that

investigated the fuming of plastic-modified asphalt [52, 55]. However, the total amount of

fumes emitted from plastic-modified asphalt would ultimately depend on the selection of the

bitumen working temperature, where lower temperatures would decrease fuming and

emissions from both bitumen and plastics [51, 53]. Although experiments in laboratory-

controlled settings can provide a very accurate estimate of the differences between the

compounds emitted by two or more products, these cannot be utilised for toxicologic a l

assessments, as other external representative factors are not considered (Figure 4a). In fact,

various climatic factors, such as wind, can significantly affect the magnitude of the problem,

and the fumes concentration (expressed in µg/m3 ) measured in enclosed areas can actually be

far from the fumes to which workers are exposed in the field. The workers’ location and tasks

also significantly impact their exposure to fumes, since those who are close to the paver, such

as the workers in charge of hand screeding, would be exposed to greater concentration of

emission compounds than those further away, such as the drivers of the rollers. In the

laboratory, fumes are collected from the top of hot bitumen/asphalt containers where emissio ns
concentrations are the highest, whereas these are of reduced magnitude when measured through

a personal fume sampler on field workers (Figure 4b).

Figure 4. a) Laboratory setup for fuming testing, b) personal fume sampler used in the field,

c) wet track abrasion machine for MP release assessment and d) pavement friction tester.

Adapted from [18, 56].

3.3 Environmental impact - contribution to microplastic pollution

The environmental impact of plastic roads has recently been investigated via LCA, which

demonstrated that, overall, incorporating recycled plastics in asphalt via wet or dry methods

could be more environmentally beneficial than asphalt modified with virgin polymers (SBS,

EVA) and standard asphalt [57]. However, the release of microplastics (MPs) from plastic
modified roads upon traffic and road wear has not been considered in LCA to date, despite

being one of the main environmental impacts related to the construction of plastic roads.

Although bitumen modifiers such as ethylene-based polymers (EVA) and SBS have been used

since the 1970s-1980s and crumb rubber (polyisoprene and SBR) since 1956 [10, 11],

environmental concerns about microplastics have been raised only very recently. In Norway,

it was estimated that almost 10 tons of rubber MPs were released annually from studded tyres,

while 28 tons of SBS MPs originated from SBS-modified roads and up to 180 tons of MPs

originated from road markings [58]. Estimations were based on the road wear factor caused by

studded tyres but not on field-collected samples of road dust, which therefore limits the

extrapolation of these data to other types of roads. The contribution of plastic roads to MPs

pollution is also unclear because most reports released to date have focused on MPs found in

road dust, whereas differentiating between the MPs released from the road itself and those

originating from nearby construction sites, tyres or road markings remains complex [59-61].

The main challenges in the study of MPs release from the asphalt material itself are the lack of

technology to detect these particles, whose size can vary from 5 mm to a few nanometres [62],

and the need for standard equipment simulating road traffic. Although pavement friction testers

are commonly used in the field to evaluate the degradation of the road (Figure 4d), such

equipment is not designed to generate and collect MPs released upon abrasion. A rotary abrader

equipped with sandpaper has been used previously to assess MPs release from road markings

[59]; however, such an instrument is not suitable for thick and rough asphalt samples and the

use of sandpaper is not representative of road traffic. An alternative was developed recently

with a wet track abrasion machine that is commonly employed to test the abrasion resistance

of slurry seals used as pavement preservation treatment [63] (Figure 4c). An abrasion

procedure was designed based on this instrument to assess the release of MPs from PE-, PP-,

ABS- and PET-modified bitumen/asphalt after modification of the abrasion hose and redesign
of the pan holding the sample [18]. The phenomenon of MPs release from roads is still under

debate, primarily because it depends on the way plastics are incorporated into bitumen/aspha lt.

Plastics incorporated via the ‘wet’ method would be more easily found in the thin bitumen film

on top of the asphalt pavement that is subjected to direct abrasion from vehicles. In contrast,

plastics used as aggregate substitutes may or may not be exposed directly to vehicle abrasion,

as they can be located deeper in the asphalt layer. The type of plastic used in asphalt could also

impact the generation of MPs, since brittle plastics would be prone to breakage, whereas

stronger plastics could resist more abrasion and vehicle loads. UV ageing could also favour the

formation of MPs by weakening the plastics, specifically if recycled plastics were already

weakened due to their thermal and mechanical history [22]. Finally, abrasion of roads mainly

occurs where tyres are in contact with the asphalt, and its effect depends on tangential stresses

exerted by vehicles and the temperature of the pavement; hence, not all of the road surface is

abraded the same way. The long-term abrasion of the road is also likely to vary depending on

the mechanical properties of the road as well as external climatic conditions. Hence, the results

of abrasion testing conducted in a laboratory on an asphalt specimen under controlled

temperature, water pH and duration cannot be directly correlated to real traffic scenarios [63],

which could prove to be extremely challenging to replicate. Such laboratory testing for MPs

release should rather be used as a tool to benchmark new plastic-modified asphalt products

against reference mixes already in use in the country or area of interest.

Plastics use in the sublayers of a road pavement would never be worn out by traffic and

therefore are not supposed to contribute to MPs pollution. However, MPs could contribute to

asphalt leaching by acting as vectors of asphalt contaminants, such as heavy metals, VOCs or

PAHs [64], into sublayers and eventually groundwater [65]. This potential environme nta l

threat has not been investigated to date.

4 Conclusions and prospects

Incorporating recycled plastics into bituminous materials appears to be a sustainable and

economical solution to tackle current plastic waste management issues; however, to date, only

a small volume of plastic-modified asphalt has been laid worldwide, mostly for monitor ing

purposes. The main limitations preventing local authorities from approving the construction of

plastic roads include the variability of the plastic feedstock whose composition varies

seasonally, compatibility issues between plastic and bitumen and the lack of understanding of

the potential environmental impacts associated with plastic roads in terms of fuming,

microplastics release and leaching. The lack of knowledge about the long-term performance of

plastic roads remains an obstacle to their construction since most plastic roads currently being

monitored are less than 8 years old, with the majority of them just being recently built.

The successful development of plastic roads relies on a number of needs. A ‘road-grade’

recycled plastic stream should be implemented in recycling facilities based on the properties

of the recycled plastics to ensure that such plastics meet the quality criteria of the

bitumen/asphalt industry. New testing procedures are needed to assess the long- term

performance of plastic roads, based on either field or laboratory testing. Standards should also

be developed to assess the contribution of plastic roads to fuming, MPs pollution and

contaminant leaching. Although few procedures have been developed, certified procedures are

required for bitumen/asphalt manufacturers to test and compare their own products against

common benchmarks. Datasets quantifying the environmental impact of new plastic-modified

asphalt products would ultimately help policy makers set MPs and fuming thresholds and

further advance the uptake of new plastic-modified asphalt pavements.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Austroads for their contribution in this research through

the funding of the project APT6305 – Use of road-grade recycled plastics for sustainab le

asphalt pavements.
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Graphical abstract text

The main challenges related to the construction of plastic roads include the wide variability in
the plastic composition and properties after recycling, which affect the mechanical and
environmental properties. Standard procedures are required to foster the construction of
plastic roads if proved to be a sustainable practice.
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