Sustainable Use of Waste Glass in Pavement Systems–Review, Limitations and Potential Application

Abstract

Transportation sector due to increased pavement lengths is one of main sources of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. With increased environmental awareness and focus on recycling, many studies used recycled material in pavement systems to implement the sustainability. The recycling of waste glass in pavement systems has attracted much interest worldwide due to increased disposal costs. As a pavement material, waste glass could be used as an aggregate substitute in Portland cement concrete, asphalt mixtures and base/sub-base courses. When finely ground, glass can also be used as supplementary cementitious material for substituting partial cement. This paper reviews the different uses of waste glass in pavement systems and the effect of the glass properties on the performance of pavement materials. This review compared the test results reported by different researchers and discusses limitations of using recycled glass in pavement systems along with potential applications. Further, many aspects of the local markets were found to be supportive of diverting recycled glass to concrete products, however, the cost of glass milling and the limited use of concrete products containing glass locally make such diversion uneconomical at the present time. The findings from this review study are expected to advance knowledge in recycling waste glass in pavement systems and offer an effective technique for diverting a large amount of waste glass from landfills.