For Irish local authorities, the pressure is growing—not just to manage waste, but to account for one of the most valuable and overlooked public assets in road construction: milled blacktop.

Every year, thousands of tonnes of high-value asphalt are scraped from Ireland’s roads during resurfacing. This material—known as road planings—is not just reusable, it’s financially valuable. Yet in far too many projects, it goes untracked, underreported, or disappears entirely.

In its guidance, Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) reinforces a message that every local authority and roads engineer should take seriously:

Road planings must be tracked through their entire lifecycle.

As Ireland accelerates its shift toward a circular economy, public bodies are being held accountable not just for how roads are built—but for how materials are recovered, reused, and reported.

This isn’t just best practice. It’s becoming compliance.