In 2018, Melbourne put 200,000 plastic bags, 63,000 glass bottles and 4,500 used printer cartridges into a road; 250 tonnes of recycled asphalt showed 60% better fatigue resistance

When road crews resurfaced Rayfield Avenue in suburban Melbourne back in 2018, the mix looked like standard black asphalt. Beneath the surface, however, laid a quiet experiment in civil engineering. Civil contractor Downer joined forces with the Hume City Council and recycling firm Close the Loop to lay 250 tonnes of a recycled pavement blend called Reconophalt. The mix diverted 200,000 soft plastic bags, 63,000 crushed glass bottles, and 4,500 discarded printer cartridges away from local landfills.

Instead of weakening the road, the discarded waste genuinely improved it. Soft plastics and printer toner melted into the bitumen binder, forming a flexible polymer network that absorbs heavy wheel loads. Performance testing showed a 60 percent boost in fatigue resistance compared to standard asphalt mixes, helping the street resist structural cracking and summer heat ruts. Encapsulating the polymers tightly inside the pavement matrix also prevents plastics from degrading into microplastics within surrounding soil. What began as a single local trial in Craigieburn has since turned into a practical model for durable, circular infrastructure.

A Melbourne Suburban Street Turned 200,000 Plastic Bags into Bitumen

The scale of the material recovery gives the project its most unusual dimension. Soft plastics equivalent to about 200,000 plastic bags and packaging items were diverted for use in the trial, alongside glass equivalent to approximately 63,000 bottles. Toner recovered from more than 4,500 used printer cartridges was also incorporated into the process.


Those materials were combined with 50 tonnes of recycled asphalt to produce the 250-tonne asphalt mix. Rather than treating each waste stream as an isolated recycling problem, the project used them as inputs for another industry, where they could replace part of the materials normally required for road construction.

That approach is central to the idea of a circular economy. Waste is not simply collected and disposed of, but recovered and processed so it can become a resource for another product. Roads provide an especially interesting opportunity because they require large volumes of durable materials and are continually being resurfaced and rebuilt.

How does plastic waste become part of asphalt?

Soft plastics are among the more difficult materials to recycle through conventional household systems because their thin, flexible form can complicate sorting and processing. In this trial, Close the Loop developed a plastic additive that could be incorporated into the asphalt mixture, creating another pathway for recovered plastic.

The recycled glass and toner were also repurposed as components of the road-making process. The aim was not simply to put waste into a road, but to process those materials so the resulting asphalt could meet practical performance requirements.

Does the recycled road perform as well as conventional asphalt?

The trial produced some significant performance results. According to the project information, the sustainable asphalt showed a 65 per cent improvement in fatigue life, meaning it was able to withstand repeated loading for longer before developing fatigue-related damage.

It also demonstrated superior resistance to deformation. In practical terms, that matters because heavy and repeated traffic can gradually cause asphalt to distort, producing ruts and other forms of pavement damage. Better resistance can help a road maintain its shape for longer, particularly under heavy vehicle traffic.

The combination of durability and waste recovery is what gives the trial wider significance. Using recycled materials would have limited value if it resulted in a weaker surface that needed earlier replacement. The reported performance suggests the material can provide environmental benefits while still meeting the demanding conditions expected of road infrastructure.

Why was government funding important to the project?

The trial was supported through Victoria's $2.5 million Resource Recovery Market Development Fund, which was established to encourage research, development and new markets for recyclable waste. Government funding helped reduce some of the financial and technical barriers involved in turning recovered materials into commercially useful products.

Downer received $67,000 from the fund, while Close the Loop received $40,000 to support equipment used to develop the plastic additive for the asphalt mixture. That funding illustrates a practical challenge in recycling: recovering waste is only one part of the process. Companies also need technology, equipment and reliable markets capable of turning that material into something that can be used at scale.

For local governments, partnerships such as this can also provide a way to test new materials within ordinary infrastructure projects rather than treating recycling as a separate environmental exercise. Hume City Council's involvement connected the recycling work with an actual road application, giving the technology a real-world setting in which its performance could be assessed.

Could roads become a bigger market for difficult waste?

The trial points to a broader possibility for materials that are hard to recycle through familiar systems. Soft plastics, spent toner and glass may originate from very different products, but road construction creates an opportunity to bring them together in a single high-volume application.

That does not mean every waste material can automatically be used in asphalt, nor does one trial establish how the approach will perform across every road type or climate. Long-term monitoring, consistent material quality and the economics of processing waste will all influence whether similar mixes can be adopted more widely.

Still, the project demonstrates why collaboration can matter as much as the recycled material itself. A council provides an infrastructure setting, recycling companies develop ways to recover and process waste, and a construction company turns those materials into a finished road product.