Waste Plastic and Rubber in Concrete and Cement Mortar: A Tertiary Literature Review

In recent years, the addition of plastic and rubber waste to construction materials has been widely studied by the research community. This great interest can mainly be attributed to the achievable potential environmental and economic benefits, mainly deriving from the reduction of incinerated or landfilled wastes and the decrease of used raw materials. Several reviews have been published on the addition of polymeric waste materials in concrete and cement mortar mixtures, discussing properties, environmental and cost implications. However, there are not available studies that organize and analyses the knowledge presented in this review. For the scope, in this paper we present a tertiary study of previous relevant review articles from peer-reviewed journals, with the aim to provide an overview of the state of the evidence related to this topic and to highlight the main critical aspects and open issues. The overview provides conclusions drawn from the 33 included reviews finding different open issues on the theme regarding environmental performance, cost savings and impacts on the supply chain as well as long term health problem related to the use of waste plastic and rubber in concrete and cement mortar. For each open issue further research proposals are also suggested.