Are Low-Temperature Asphalts a Good Choice?

In the last few years, European and international policies set the objective of achieving high levels of health and environmental protection. For preventing and reducing the environmental effects of asphalt pavements, life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely recognized as a critical tool to systematically monitor and control life-cycle-related impacts, from the extraction of raw materials, through production, transportation, and manufacturing, to the end-of-life phase. Using an LCA-based method, this study discusses the impacts related to two different bituminous mixtures, focusing on assessing the potential sustainable performance of including both recycled and virgin materials. The comparative analysis involves two mixtures: a warm asphalt mixture (WMA) including crumb rubber from end-of-life tyres and recycled mineral oil, and a conventional hot mix asphalt (HMA) (dense-graded) mixture. The specific purpose of this work is to quantify the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource consumption associated with the selected solutions, providing insights and broadening knowledge for the use of sustainable materials and related new processes in the field of road construction, from an environmental perspective.