Shell Low Temp (LT) Solutions and Shell Bitumen LT R

Title: Circular Roads: Shell Bitumen LT R

Duration: 5:25 minutes

Description:

Partnering with Cumbria County Council, Shell Bitumen LT R which is a low-temperature binder with a chemically converted waste plastic additive blended into the bitumen was used to pave roads as part of a government initiative.

[Text displays]

{Shell Bitumen LT R}

[Animated sequence]

{White growing rectangle backing the Shell Bitumen LTR logo + Cumbria County Council + Hanon logos}

[Text displays]

{Circular Roads}

[Background music plays]

{Uplifting driven music}

{Voice over}

{Across the globe, waste plastic is a big issue. This is a story about how waste plastic can be re-used in energy-efficient road building while supporting a more sustainable circular economy. Cumbria County Council and other local authorities face the challenges of recycling high volumes of waste plastic and keeping their local roads and highways safe.}

{Keith Little, Cumbria Council}

{The issues mainly we have in Cumbria with highways is degradation of our highway and the materials that's on there, so potholes particular issue for us winter times. we need the highway to be safe for the traveling public and for visitors coming into Cumbria. We also have an issue with waste in the county.

Cumbria County Council are a tier-one authority, which means they're responsible for most local Government actions within their area. It was natural for them to want to be a part of the Department for Transport-sponsored ADEPT Live Labs program, which is an initiative to encourage innovation in roads and the circular economy.

We have a good working relationship with the Department of Transport. We are a tier-one authority, which means we use the funding that we get, we use it wisely and we use it sensibly. When the government, working through ADEPT Live Labs, put up £22.9 million for innovative projects maintaining highways, we applied to government for some funding and we were awarded £1.6 million to go and do these trials.}

{Voice over}

{Cumbria County Council brought in Hanson Contracting, one of their core surfacing contractors for road and highway maintenance. Hanson is a leading supplier of building materials to the construction industry. Including aggregate and asphalt. As one of Shell Bitumen's main customers, they introduced Shell and its low-temperature bitumen made from chemically converted waste plastic to Cumbria Council.}

{Adrian Stubbs, Hanson}
{Hanson and Shell have worked very closely together for a number of years now, so it led naturally to our involvement on this project. We've been surfacing framework contractor for Cumbria County Council for nine years now. During that time, they've been very receptive to looking at new products. When Cumbria County Council got the funding for the Live Labs trials, and when Shell came forward with the Shell Bitumen LT R product, it seemed natural for us to put that forward for trials in Cumbria.}

{Keith Little, Cumbria Council}
{One of the things that excited Cumbria about working with Shell on this LT R technology is the plastic that's going to be used, taken out of the system, the carbon reduction, and the temperature that is required to manufacture this product. That's what's driving us to go forward.}

{Voice over}
{The first primary benefit of Shell Bitumen's LT R is that it comes from an end-of-life recycled technology made from waste plastic, and it supports the circular economy. The second is, at the same time, it allows asphalt manufacturers to reduce their production and paving temperatures and, in turn, lower their CO2 output. Richard Taylor, Shell's global technology development manager, explains the circular economy and where the technology fits.}

[Animated sequence]

{Stylised line animation of car on road]

[Text displays]

{1km of Shell Bitumen LT R road}

[Animated sequence]

{Stylised line animation of plastic bottle]

[Text displays]

{25,000 bottles (500ml}

{Richard Taylor, Shell}
{There's a growing recognition that the world needs to move away from a take, make, waste linear economy to a circular economy, where products have a long life, that they're serviceable, can be repaired, We're taking plastic at the end of its life, is being recycled into an additive that can be used to lower the production temperatures of asphalt.

The first trials in Europe were carried out as part of the Live Labs projects in Cumbria, diverse sites from industrial areas through to the very rural location at Nenthead, which is a very exposed location. The advantage of doing trials in different settings like that and different climates, different loading, it gives us a chance to look at the material under these diverse conditions in order to assess its performance.}

{Keith Little, Cumbria Council}
{Hopefully, Cumbria County Council working with Shell and our contractors would be able to get good testing of the product that we're using on our highway now. We'll monitor that over a period of time, and hopefully, it'll become part of the actual makeup of repairing roads and putting new roads down in Cumbria over many years to come.}

{Adrian Stubbs, Hanson}
{Sustainability has always been a high priority for Hanson. Even more so now, we've seen a big drive from Highways England and even local authorities we deal with to produce more sustainable products.}

{Richard Taylor, Shell}
{The circular economy remains a central part of our research and development efforts, and LTO is just one innovation example of how we can take waste from one industry, and convert that into a useful product in another.}

{Voice over}
{As the world moves away from a linear economy to a circular economy in the ongoing global effort to protect our planet, Shell will continue to invest in research and development projects, and work with customers to bring innovative binder solutions to the market. Shell Bitumen LT R is just the beginning.}

[Animated sequence]

{Shell logo reveal.}

[Background music plays]

{Slow guitar - Shell Mnemonic}