“It seems to have created its own level of interest – it looks like any other road,” says Hume mayor Geoff Porter. “It could be like a tourist destination – compete with the Great Ocean Road, eh?” Cr Porter is joking, but projects like this could help tackle Australia’s waste crisis. Loading The 300-metre stretch of road contains 200,000 plastic bags, 63,000 glass bottles and toner from 4500 used printer cartridges mixed with asphalt. Cr Porter says the rubbish used in the road is equivalent to that collected in the recycle bins of Rayfield Avenue residents over 10 years.

“We think that is something to be pretty proud of,” he says. The scourge of plastic pollution – 4 billion bags are used each year in Australia with most ending up in landfill – has become even more pressing following China’s crackdown on imported waste and Coles’ backflips on charging for plastic bags. China has signalled it will no longer be the world’s rubbish dump, banning 24 types of waste – including some plastics and paper – and setting a tougher standard for contamination levels at the start of this year. Although China’s ban mostly affects kerbside recyclables, which do not include plastic bags, the Australian Council of Recycling is ebullient about the trial of the new asphalt. “Awesome, awesome, awesome,” says chief executive Pete Shmigel.

“Plastiphalt is a positive example of what can be done in response to the China threat, because it gives us a stronger domestic market demand for the plastics that consumers and industry collect and sort here.” Mr Shmigel says that although some playgrounds, car park kerbs, speed humps and park tables and benches are already made with recycled materials, it is not at a scale large enough to soak up enough rubbish. “Roads are the biggest asset in Australia – we are a little bit excited,” he says. “My view is we should not resent China; we should emulate what they have done. This is a great opportunity to make our own products.” Plastiphalt is a collaboration between Australian company Downer, Close the Loop – which provides pellets made from recycled plastic bags, engine oil and toner that are added to the asphalt – and Red Group, which collects plastic bags in bins outside supermarkets. Plastic pellets made from soft plastics such as used plastic bags and packaging. Credit:Image courtesy of Downer

Close the Loop sales and marketing manager Peter Tamblyn says the Victorian recycling company had been working on the pellets 18 months before China announced its ban, although he admits: “If you were to write the script, the timing couldn’t have been better.” He says Australian governments need to show leadership by using asphalt in their roads that contain recycled materials. “It’s just a great idea that solves a major major waste problem we had anyway even before China – we send 300,000 tonnes of soft plastic to landfill a year and we have been doing that for years.” The idea of using recycled plastic in roads has been around for some time. In 2002 chemistry professor Dr Rajagopalan Vasudevan paved an 18-metre road at a college campus in Madurai, India, using plastic-modified bitumen. Since then, almost 10,000 kilometres of Indian roads have been reportedly paved using this technique.

But Jim Appleby, the general manager of reconomy at Downer, stresses Plastiphalt is made using a very different process to that of plastic roads in India “What we are doing is a complex technical operation compared to some of the highlighted items we have seen on the internet in India,” he says. Mr Appleby says Plastiphalt is cost competitive and has a 65 per cent improvement in fatigue life, which means the road lasts longer and can better handle heavy traffic. Loading “Engineers who control networks in Australia have to make sure roads are safe and sustainable, and that confidence is now coming through,” he says.

Mr Appleby says he is often asked if Plastiphalt creates microbeads which pollute waterways and poison marine life. “We completely melt the plastic into the bitumen,'' he says. “If you imagine putting sugar into coffee, it dissolves. This is exactly what happens; there are no microbeads.” The second road will be laid in Engadine in Sutherland Shire in Sydney’s south on Friday and a third in Queensland next month. Sutherland Shire mayor Carmelo Pesce says the council is committed to showing leadership in sustainability and the use of recycled products. But in a council report last month Sutherland Shire said there were risks associated with the trial that could not be fully dismissed due to the asphalt being a newly developed product with only limited field testing.