The Transport Agency has goals to maximise returns and deliver efficient, safe and responsible highway solutions . The Agency is also committed to act in an environmentally and socially responsible manner .
Minimising the consumption of resources when delivering highway solutions helps minimise environmental impacts and has the potential to create cost savings.
Resource efficiency for state highway projects is defined as achieving the best possible output for the least volume of materials and energy consumed during the construction, operation and maintenance of state highways, while providing relevant levels of service for safety, speed, environment and amenity.
What we're trying to achieve
The Transport Agency’s aim is to deliver state highway functions in a resource efficient manner, minimising resource use and optimising resource recovery. The waste management hierarchy provides an order of preference for action to reduce and manage waste and suggests the first priority should be to prevent the generation of waste; then opportunities to reduce waste should be explored; opportunities to re-use waste should be considered; and finally opportunities to recycle or recover waste should be taken.
In the context of state highways this means we are most resource efficient when we retain pavements and structures as long as possible, then re-use parts of the pavement or structures, consider using recycled materials where new materials are required and finally recover discarded materials for use elsewhere. Sourcing materials locally also reduces haulage and energy consumption.
Each state highway improvement, maintenance or renewal project is working within specific local conditions. The Transport Agency’s aim is to enable each project and contract to easily consider and implement the resource efficiency opportunities that make sense within their context.
The following pages provide guidance and tools to help achieve this aim. Case studies from other projects highlight how resource efficiency opportunities have been implemented successfully to date.
Guidance, case studies and tools
Resource efficiency benefits are maximised when they are considered early in project development. Some opportunities for projects are as follows.
Opportunity matrixRecycled and alternative materials currently allowed in Transport Agency specificationsResource recoveryGreenroads
What we know
The Information and research page provides facts on the current use of recycled materials, examples of successful resource efficiency case studies, and current research projects.
For further information contact environment@nzta.govt.nz .