Transport infrastructures serve public and individual transport development. They are primarily roads, paths and railways. In Germany, they represent around ten billion tonnes of building material. 90% of this is located in the roads (Schiller et al. 2015).
The material stock of transport infrastructures is dominated by 99% non-metallic mineral materials. Only about 1% is bituminous binders in road construction and metals and impregnated wood in rail infrastructure. The non-metallic mineral materials mainly comprise aggregates. These are gravels, sands and natural stones such as crushed stone, chippings, crushed sand and rock flour, as well as building materials made from them, such as concrete (Schiller et al. 2015).
The material quantities presented here are based on studies on the anthropogenic material stock in Germany (Schiller et al. 2015). They were carried out on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) at the Leibniz Institute for Ecological Spatial Development Dresden (IOER) in cooperation with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and INTECUS GmbH Dresden.
