Environmental Impact of a Binding Course Pavement Section, with Asphalt Recycled at Varying Rates

ABSTRACT An experimental program has thus been undertaken to collect environmental data and assess the potential environmental impacts from a pavement containing Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in varying proportions, by means of the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) technique. This paper presents the methods and results inherent in the Impact Assessment component of the LCA standard (ISO 14 043). Except for the toxicity and ecotoxicity impact indicators, the entire set of computed indicators reveals a trend of decreasing potential environmental impacts with an increasing recycling rate. The trend derived for the majority of computed indicators is found strongly correlated with the transport process. Results depend upon various data sources, whose quality is not known with precision that could lead to biasing indicator results. Simplifying hypotheses are recalled in the conclusion.