Cumbria County Council to lay the UK’s first plastic highway to be funded by the Department for Transport

MacRebur is working with Cumbria County Council to lay the UK’s first plastic waste highway in Carlisle to be funded by the Department for Transport. 

The project is part of the ADEPT SMART Places Live Labs Programme, a £22.9 million initiative funded by the Department for Transport.

The project will recycle the equivalent of approximately 238,958 single use plastic bags that would otherwise have gone to incineration or landfill.

Covering a combined area of 3079m² in what is a first for the UK’s highway network, the waste plastic is processed, granulated, and combined with asphalt for use in road construction and surfacing to extend and enhance the binding properties of the bitumen.

Located on Lowther Street in the centre of Carlisle, the new road will look exactly the same as regular asphalt but because it contains plastic, it will be more flexible. This means it can cope better with contraction and expansion caused by changes in the weather, reducing cracks and potholes.

The road follows months of extensive trials in Cumbria taking place as part of the ADEPT SMART Places Live Labs programme, which invests in trialling the sustainability and suitability of using plastic waste additives in highway construction.

Allocated £1.6 million, Cumbria is one of eight projects selected to carry out real world tests using new highways technology and methods on local roads.

Replacing part of the bitumen normally used to produce asphalt with granulated waste plastic, MacRebur’s roads also require less fossil fuel, therefore reducing carbon emissions.

Toby McCartney, CEO at MacRebur, said: “After first starting trials in January 2019, it is brilliant to see the first waste plastic highway take form in Carlisle.

“Implementing waste plastic roads across the country would provide a real opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint of road construction. With ministers planning to spend over £27 billion on road building over the next five years, it’s so important to make sure that construction is as environmentally-friendly as possible by decreasing carbon emissions and fossil fuels.”

Cllr Keith Little, Cumbria County Council Cabinet Member for Highways, added: “The county council is investing around £150,000 in resurfacing works on Lowther Street, which will make journeys smoother and safer for drivers. Working with our contractor Hanson, Cumbria is leading the way in the construction of plastic roads and there is a genuine worldwide interest in this ground-breaking material.”