A preliminary life cycle assessment – based environmental assessment of asphalt mixtures containing crumb rubber and reclaim asphalt pavement

The road construction sector is significantly material-and energy-consuming.In recent years, the pursuit of sustainable practices has led to growing interest in the use of recycled materials to reduce the environmental impacts of asphalt mixtures.However, there is a lack of comprehensive LCA-based evaluations of such materials under region-specific conditions, particularly in the context of Polish road construction.This study addresses this gap by presenting a preliminary life cycle assessment (LCA) of selected asphalt mixtures modified with crumb rubber (CR) and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), used in wearing and/or binder courses.The environmental evaluation was performed using two methods: IMPACT 2002+ and 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP 100a), supported by Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis.The results indicate that the incorporation of recycled materials contributes to the reduction of environmental burdens by decreasing raw material extraction and avoiding waste disposal in landfills.The most notable effects were observed for binder course mixtures containing 10-20% RAP, which achieved significant reductions of up to 17.7% in the IMPACT 2002+ single score and up to 24.8% in GWP 100a.For CR additives in the wearing course (2-3%) and binder course (1-2%), the results were modest but consistent, with reductions of up to 0.3% in IMPACT 2002+ and up to 1.7% in GWP 100a.