Recycled glass has been used to resurface a section of road in Tallow, Co Waterford.
After extending the county's network of bottle banks and introducing a scheme for collecting glass from hotels and pubs, Waterford County Council needed to identify markets for the crushed glass.
With glass having been used successfully in road construction projects in Britain, the council began discussions with Roadstone Provinces Ltd and Sam Shire Recycling Ltd with a view to using crushed glass in road base macadam here. According to Mr Frank Curran, senior engineer, Waterford County Council, some 30 tonnes of glass is now collected each month on behalf of the local authority.
"It is vital to the success of the recycling scheme that reliable markets for the collected glass can be found. Sam Shire Recycling has succeeded in reaching the specifications set by Roadstone which uses the crushed glass in the manufacture of road base macadam.
"This macadam, which contains about 10 per cent recycled glass, can be used on smaller roads and as an under layer in higher quality roads." Mr Anthony Fitzgerald and Mr Frank Geary, who helped lay the new road surface at Cockpit Lane in Tallow, Co Waterford, said the mixture looked just the same as conventional macadam, and there would be "no way of knowing there was glass in the mix".
According to Mr Finbarr Buckley, contracts manager for Roadstone Provinces Ltd, approximately 25,000 tonnes of macadam are used in Co Waterford each year.
"If the new macadam performs as well as anticipated, there is no reason why recycled glass couldn't be used in every batch," he said.