From Local Waste to Local Roads
Construction began on the $85 million upgrade to Wakehurst Parkway between Frenchs Forest Road at Frenchs Forest and Pittwater Road at North Narrabeen on Monday 1st June 2026.
The project has been several years in the planning and aims to address two major, longstanding issues that have affected the community for decades:
- ROAD SAFETY AND CAPACITY
The upgrade will address traffic bottlenecks at key intersections, improve dangerous intersections, road safety blackspots and increase the capacity of the Parkway.
- FLOODING
Flooding is another ongoing issue, with sections of Wakehurst Parkway, particularly around Middle Creek and Oxford Falls regularly affected. The Parkway currently closes due to flooding an average of 11 times each year, causing significant disruption for local residents and motorists.
As this important local infrastructure project gets underway, there is another connection to the Northern Beaches that is worth highlighting. Some of the construction materials to be used are being recovered and recycled right here at Kimbriki Resource Recovery Centre.
CR Plus operates the concrete and brick recycling area at Kimbriki, working alongside Kimbriki to give construction materials a useful second life. Every day, local residents and businesses bring materials such as old concrete, bricks, asphalt and roof tiles to Kimbriki, rather than simply sending them to landfill.
These materials are processed right here on site, where they are crushed and recycled into useful products including road base, aggregates and sands. With a 99.9% recovery rate, CR Plus is able to recover the vast majority of these materials and return them to productive use.
Some of those recycled materials will be used as part of the Wakehurst Parkway upgrade, after CR Plus was awarded the contract for this section of the project.
There is something particularly special about seeing materials recovered on the Northern Beaches, recycled on the Northern Beaches and then returned to the Northern Beaches to help build important local infrastructure. Put simply, an old concrete driveway, brick wall or demolished building could become part of a new road. Rather than being buried and forgotten, these materials are processed and transformed into products that can be used again.
This is the circular economy in action, taking something that has reached the end of its first useful life and turning it back into a valuable resource. Using recycled concrete, brick and asphalt helps reduce the amount of construction material going to landfill and keeps valuable resources in productive use for longer. It can also reduce our reliance on newly quarried natural resources, helping conserve stone and other raw materials that would otherwise need to be extracted from the environment.
CR Plus has been recycling concrete and brick in Sydney for more than 35 years, with a strong focus on recovering useful materials and returning them to construction rather than sending them to landfill. Projects such as the Wakehurst Parkway upgrade demonstrate that recycled materials have an important role to play in building the roads and infrastructure our communities use every day.
Recycled materials produced at Kimbriki aren’t only used for major infrastructure projects. The same products are also available for smaller local projects, including driveways, pathways, landscaping and improvements around the home.
Whether it is supplying thousands of tonnes for a major construction project or just a small load for a weekend DIY job, every tonne of recycled material reused is a tonne given another useful life.
The Wakehurst Parkway upgrade is expected to be completed by early 2028. As work continues, it is a great example of how recycling locally can help conserve resources and keep valuable materials circulating within our community.
