Recycling motorway rubble
Since December 2011, our Ettingshall headquarters has played host to an increasing pile of concrete from the M5.
Tarmac’s Concrete and Recycling Unit oversees the project, which involves removing concrete from the M5 motorway between junctions 3 and 4A, bringing the rubble to our Ettingshall site, and crushing it to be reworked into recycled products for our customers.
The concrete comes from the central motorway reservation as part of major improvement works, which include the addition of a concrete safety barrier.
The process involves 40 trucks taking 1,700 tonnes of concrete to Ettingshall overnight, between 9pm and 5am. We crush around 800 tonnes per day of this material, and we sell it as a high-quality recycled product to utilities companies and to major contractors near Ettingshall.
We are supplying approximately 6,000m3 of concrete from our Stourport Depot, on a 24/7 basis, to the company that is constructing the concrete safety barrier.
The project illustrates Tarmac’s ‘whole-life’ approach to sustainability, as the M5 contractors also use the recycled motorway material as a sub-base material before the new concrete and asphalt is laid.
