Canterbury-Bankstown Council’s exciting new recycling innovation, which will make roads more durable, has won the Circular Economy category in the KAB awards.

The program, which was partly funded by the NSW EPA, is the first time ever in Australia that glass has been used in the sub-base (the lower level of pavement structure.) The glass-included road improves gradation, resulting in easier compaction and improved permanent deformation resistance.

The Council takes in approximately 8,000 tonnes of glass every year from collections; and much of the glass is wasted. Whole glass bottles are easy to recycle. But smaller pieces of broken glass or glass products are much trickier. So there’s a lot of potentially useable material that usually goes to waste.

Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Khal Asfour said Council is leading the way when it comes to innovation in this space.

“We are thrilled to win the Keep Australia Beautiful award for our fantastic innovation that will give roads a longer life. Repairing our roads is a very costly business and I envisage this new process will go some way towards alleviating costs,” Mayor Asfour said.

“We’re excited to take the lead in an Australian first, finding a new way to use recycled glass in our roads. The strengthening of our road base will make them more durable and may even reduce potholes.”

Recycled glass will now make up 30 per cent of the new road sub-base; this means we’ll be using around 300 kilogram of glass per tonne of road base.

In NSW in any one year there will be three million tonnes of road base material used in the construction of roads and footpaths.

While glass products as small as a business card cannot be easily recycled, they can be easily recycled for road-construction. It’s a great possible solution to the issue of wastage and it’s also a cost-effective option providing sustainable outcomes for our community.

The glass will also make our roads safer and will give them longer life. Standard road base is around 85-95 per cent compaction. But, when you include glass, we have been able to reach 104.5 per cent. The higher the compaction rates, the more resistant our roads will be towards deformation or any other failures.

The project has been used successfully in road resurfacing at Marion Street and Erica Crescent, Georges Hall.