Digital Waste Tracking: From Obligation to Opportunity
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.
This isn't just a sustainability failure. It’s a financial one.
Public money paid for that blacktop—and if it’s not reused or accounted for, councils are not only missing environmental targets, they’re losing out on reusing expensive materials that have will then have to be paid for with public money .
Why Road Planings Must Be Tracked
Under Irish and EU regulations—including the Waste Management Act, Circular Economy Strategy, and CSRD—local authorities are now expected to treat road planings as a traceable asset, not just a by-product or leftover material.
That means:
Recording when, where, and how blacktop is removed
Proving where it’s reused, stored, or disposed of
Ensuring this material aren’t sold on or dumped off-record
Failing to track these movements opens the door to non-compliance, financial loss, and potential audit failures—especially as enforcement increases in 2025 and beyond.
The Compliance Context
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) has made this expectation explicit in its Circular Economy in Roads Projects Guide. Councils are now advised—and increasingly expected—to:
Track blacktop from removal to reuse
Report planing recovery rates
Demonstrate circular economy performance in tenders and funding applications
Additionally, the EPA’s by-product criteria (Nov 2023) supports the reuse of planings without waste classification—but only if their journey is documented and justified.
In other words, you can’t reuse what you can’t prove.
What’s at Stake?
Public Asset Loss
Road planings contain bitumen and aggregate—materials that are both carbon-intensive and increasingly expensive. If they're not recovered, they must be replaced with virgin product. That’s public money lost, twice.Circular Economy Non-Compliance
Councils have targets to reuse construction materials. Blacktop is low-hanging fruit. Untracked disposal drags down your reuse rates—and your compliance position.Procurement Penalties
PPN 06/21 and Green Public Procurement (GPP) frameworks now reward verifiable reuse and reporting. Without digital evidence, councils risk lower scores and reduced funding access.
Digital Tracking Turns Risk into Value
This is where digital platforms like Hub360 change the game.
Instead of relying on spreadsheets, paper dockets, or vague contractor summaries, Hub360 gives councils and engineers:
Real-time, geo-tagged tracking of every load of planings
Subcontractor oversight that ensures accountability
Automated reports for CSRD, TII, EPA, and audit reviews
Material reuse insights to support circular economy targets
No complex integrations. No IT teams needed. Just total visibility—load by load.
Final Word
Digital waste tracking is no longer a tick-box exercise. When it comes to road planings, it’s about protecting public value, meeting your legal obligations, and leading on circular economy goals.
Your blacktop is too valuable to vanish.
Track it. Reuse it. Prove it.
Talk to Hub360 today and turn compliance into opportunity—one load at a time.