Practical recycling applications of crushed waste glass in construction materials: A review

The disposal of waste glass in landfills is an important environmental challenge that many countries face around the world. The repurposing of waste glass into a construction material reduces the consumption of natural resources, minimizes greenhouse emissions and alleviates landfill scarcity. Over the last sixty-five years, numerous investigators have studied reusing crushed waste glass (CWG) as a construction material. However, CWG has not been widely used in concrete or asphalt construction applications across the globe. Additionally, barriers still exist that prevent CWG from being used as a fine aggregate in concrete, such as the severity of Alkali-silica reaction (ASR) expansions within concrete consisting of CWG, and the lack of understanding of these reactions. This paper presents an overview of previous studies carried out by researchers to reuse CWG as an aggregate in concrete and asphalt mixtures, an aggregate in unbound base and subbase applications, lightweight engineering material and a cementitious material. From the literature review conducted, it can be concluded that CWG has potential use as an aggregate in construction materials. More research is required to clarify contradictions regarding the properties of concrete containing CWG as fine aggregate, as well as further investigation of the properties of foamed waste glass concrete and ultra-lightweight fibre reinforced concrete containing expanded waste glass, and the use of glass powder as a filler in asphalt.