By Alesha Capone
Crushed glass and recycled plastics have been included in a cement mixture used to build a Hoppers Crossing footpath – the first of its kind in the state.
Wyndham council, Swinburne University, Sustainability Victoria, recycled content supplier PolyTrade and concrete contractor MetroPlant worked together on the project which incorporated the crushed remnants of 199,000 recycled glass and plastic bottles into a cement mix for the footpath’s top and base layers.
The shredded recycled plastics used in the process were between four and eight millimetres in size, while the glass particles were about three to eight millimetres.
Glass particles this small are usually too small to be recycled during a normal recycling process, and end up being sent to landfill or stockpiled.
Wyndham’s environment and sustainability portfolio holder, Cr Heather Marcus, said the 200-metre section of footpath, which contains the plastic and glass particles, was laid at Geddes Crescent Reserve earlier this month.
Cr Marcus said the footpath was part of a trial exploring the use of recycled plastics and glass in aggregate materials which make up concrete footpaths.
A Swinburne research team would monitor the footpath in Hoppers Crossing, and conduct tests on samples collected from the path.
The state government provided a Sustainability Victoria grant of $72,000 to fund the trial.
