DIRECT-MAT : sharing knowledge and practices on recycling of road materials in Europe

DIRECT-MAT is a three-year European project aiming to facilitate the sharing of national experiences on dismantling and recycling or safe disposal of road and road related materials at the European level. It was initiated within the EC 7th Framework Programme Transport first call and is comprised of partners from fifteen participating countries for a budget of 1,2 million Euros. The project runs through 2009–2011 and involves building a European Web database and drafting best practice guides on DIsmantling and RECycling Techniques for road MATerials (“DIRECT-MAT”). The intention is that project results shall support the daily work of practitioners, researchers and standardisation bodies. Several materials are addressed – unbound, hydraulically bound and asphalt road materials, but also other materials related to road use but not commonly recycled in road construction. These include tyre shreds, sediment from ditches, industrial by-products and reinforcement materials. The work programme is organised into seven work packages where four packages focus on the various construction materials, one is devoted to the database and the remaining two work packages to management & coordination and dissemination. Dissemination activities include cooperation with a Reference Group consisting of end users in several countries; presentations in national and international papers and conferences as well as the arrangement of national seminars and a European workshop for end users. Continuous project information will be available at http://direct-mat.fehrl.org. At present, many European countries have acquired experience in dismantling and recycling road materials back into roads. However, research results are not widely implemented and national documents are not often available to specialists from other countries. In this European project, twenty partners cooperate to build a web database that will provide access to validated guidelines, national document references, harmonised literature reviews and practical application case studies based on jobsite data sets. In this way DIRECT-MAT will actively contribute to generating closer cooperation between research and practice within road material recycling and also contribute to reducing the waste disposal associated with roads.