In a global circular‐economy perspective, processes innovation and sustainability efforts must target the transition to a greener regenerative economy for a factual environmental protection.

In this context, recycling and up‐cycling strategies for End‐of‐Life (EoL) products and materials can effectively reduce landfilling and construction and maintenance‐related costs, thus generating value.

The 3WASPS project aims to innovate bringing in three of the most common polymeric wastes, sustainably recycling them into the paving industry. This research is based on advanced existing outcomes from the partners and wants to make the most of residual resources nested in the identified wastes. Their recycling will enter the multiple recyclability process that makes asphalt a perpetual construction material.

Industrial processes for recycling three EoL polymeric materials from daily waste products into common asphalt paving will be identified using validated lab results and demonstrators. Specifically, the three common waste materials will be:

• plastics derived from multilayered food carton

• electronic cigarette butts (CBs)

• scraped tires

3WASPS aims to define and validate a protocol for industrial production of asphalt mixtures using the EoL polymeric materials, and to construct an experimental road section to demonstrate their viability for regular use in the paving industry.

In specific:

• the three considered waste materials will be valorized via thermochemical treatments (pyrolysis and HydroThermal Liquefaction, HTL) to obtain solid (char) and liquid (oil) products to be used as microfillers and recycling agents, respectively;

• the residual char obtained from the pyrolysis process will be functionally recycled into engineered geopolymer‐based aggregates as active microfiller, enhancing the final properties of the developed materials;

• plastics (PE) from multilayered food cartons will replace traditional SBS polymer for bitumen modification in asphalt production. These plastics, recovered and made into pellets through an already industrialized recovering process, can be directly added at the asphalt plant, offering strength comparable to SBS polymers;

• a novel pelletized fiber is obtained from PLA‐based electronic cigarette butts (CBs) and recycled into asphalt pavement applications. The produced pellet exhibits distinct features from ordinary fiber and is comparable to pelletized engineered compounds incorporating polymers.

The performance shown by the innovative recycled materials in the experimental section will be the basis for new material industrial production protocols and for developing specific technical standards.