Allback2pave: Towards a sustainable recycling of asphalt in wearing courses

Nowadays, asphalt plant technologies allow producing asphalt mixtures incorporating up to 100% reclaimed asphalt. Unfortunately policies are still behind technology and in order to suggest guidelines for a widespread use for surface courses, road managers feel the need of having a deeper understanding of optimised design strategies, information related to the handling in asphalt plants and on the performance of these mixes. This paper provides the summary of the main results and the details of the main idea behind “AllBack2Pave 2013–2015” a two-years, 500 K€ project funded by the CEDR Transnational Road Research project that evaluated the feasibility of going towards 100% recycling of asphalt pavements into surface courses. The project, coordinated by the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, together with the University of Nottingham and University of Palermo, was structured so to provide an overview of the European panorama by involving 3 EU countries from the South (Italy), Centre (Germany) and North (UK). In order to facilitate the deployment of lean concepts and lean production practices, the investigation was implemented in close collaboration with the private sector, including asphalt mixing plants, chemical additives producers and waste material managers.