Minimising carbon emissions and promoting the use of sustainable materials in road maintenance is a shared priority of Transport Scotland and WSP. As Scotland TranServ identified major road maintenance schemes, particularly those on remote Trunk Roads, the project team found that many of them still contained tar.
Phased out by the 1990s, tar is now classified as special waste and, therefore, a costly disposal process to mitigate its negative impact on the environment.
TranServ’s pavement team collaborated with their specialist supply chain and researched the market to identify sustainable solutions to this problem– including in-situ and ex-situ methods that had the potential for use on the South West network. In-situ recycling involved a chain of on-site processing and paving machinery that would process the existing pavement materials into new material. Ex-situ recycling involved a similar process, but materials would be taken to a nearby facility for processing. Both could be quickly implemented and were capable of delivering significant environmental, economic and safety benefits.
For the first time on the Scottish Trunk Road network, the Transport Asset Management project team used a modernised in-situ recycling method at Polneul on the A76. With 758 tonnes of special waste for disposal, 38 construction wagons would have had to complete a 317-mile roundtrip from the site to the nearest disposal facility at Middlesbrough – a total of over 12,000 miles. By using in-situ recycling, we saved the equivalent of lorry miles travelling from Glasgow to Christchurch in New Zealand. This reuse of material also minimised the import of virgin aggregates – conserving resources, speeding up construction and reducing plant and transportation costs.