World’s first ‘fully recycled road’
Eurovia complete part of major French motorway renovation project using 100% recycled asphalt
EUROVIA, the VINCI subsidiary specializing in transport infrastructure and urban development, in collaboration with VINCI Autoroutes, have recently completed the world’s first ‘fully recycled road’.
The road was built as part of a major motorway renovation project on the VINCI Autoroutes network, along a 1km stretch of the A10 motorway between Pons and Saint Aubin in south-west France. Eurovia successfully completed this pilot experiment after more than two years of research and development.
The ‘fully recycled road’ was made possible through the design – in partnership with Marini-Ermont (Fayat Group) – of an innovative mobile continuous asphalt plant (TRX100%), which made it possible to recycle up to 100% of asphalt aggregates from nearby road maintenance sites.
The bulk of the supply can be sourced from the milling of materials produced by the site, thereby partly or fully protecting natural resources and reducing both transport logistics and the site’s carbon footprint to a minimum, with a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
VINCI Autoroutes, the leading motorway network operators in France, have fully integrated recycling into their circular economy strategy in infrastructure maintenance operations and, as the project owner, say they are keen to promote and deploy this kind of solution across their projects.
The research project won the ‘Route du futur’ call for projects launched by the French Environment & Energy Management Agency, ADEME, as part of the Investing for the Future Programme to promote the development of innovative and ambitious industrial solutions to reduce the environmental impact of road infrastructure and support the energy transition in the road industry.
