Littar: turning landfill waste into roads

Dennis Debie was a mechanical engineer with a simple observation and nowhere obvious to take it. Romania’s landfills were full of plastic and glass that couldn’t be recycled through conventional streams, waste that existing systems had essentially given up on.

On walks with his dog, Debie started picking up waste and experimenting with the collected materials in his kitchen, seeing what he could create.

“I started thinking, ‘How can I improve roads?’ ’ says Debie. 

After bringing in business partner Sebastian Tudose as a co-founder, and starting a lab in a garage with a shredder and oven – Littar was born. It became one of the projects of The Climate Change Company, which Debie founded to become an incubator for climate tech solutions.  

A problem hiding in plain sight 

According to Debie, asphalt is the most re-used material on the planet as it is made up of rocks and bitumen; the latter can be melted and re-used. However, the mineral aggregates required to build roads can be difficult and energy-intensive to retrieve, At the same time, certain categories of waste, composite plastics, fibre optics, window glass, have no viable recycling pathway and end up in landfills by default.

Littar sits at the intersection of those two realities. It is used primarily in the foundational layer of asphalt as a base or binder layer in road structures. The result reduces emissions by up to 83 per cent compared to traditional asphalt aggregate, and gives previously unrecyclable waste a defined and durable end use. 

 “We didn’t want to start a discussion of how plastics could be used in asphalt’s surface layer. Driving on a road where the top layer is plastic could be detrimental. For example, it could contribute to forest fires and the creation of microplastics,” Debie says.   

How Littar closes the gap 

The Climate Change Company is one of over 60 companies in Climate KIC’s portfolio that has moved from pilot to scale, thanks to a convertible investment of €50,000 and impact advisory. The investment has supported Littar’s first commercial application: a parking lot foundation for the municipality of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The Cluj-Napoca project upcycled the equivalent of 115,000 single-use plastic bottles and 10,000 glass wine bottles, mitigating seven tonnes of CO2 equivalent. To date, the technology has achieved a cumulative reduction of 11,000kg CO2 equivalent.

Debbie worked with Climate KIC impact advisors to quantify the emissions mitigation potential of Littar and benchmark it against existing market solutions. This approach helps ventures build the evidence they need to demonstrate their climate impact, attract investment and scale solutions that contribute to the transition to a low-carbon future.

The more significant signal of Littar’s potential came when The Climate Change Company began working with Prysmian Group, the world’s largest producer of fibre optic cables. The company wanted a recycling solution that was more eco-friendly than the typical process, which involves burning them to produce cement. Following this collaboration, it was discovered that Littar can be made from the waste materials of these glass-and-plastic cables. 

A similar fibre optic project is now underway in Canada, in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada, signaling that the methodology is being taken seriously as a replicable model beyond Romania’s borders.

Debie says, “It’s been interesting to work with the Canadian government, which understands that there is waste in every local area that could be better used. In future, we hope to do something similar in Romania, especially in rural areas with limited infrastructure. We’d love to use Littar on these roads.” 

The road ahead 

Rethinking waste as a resource for core infrastructure points to a broader shift in how cities can decarbonise at scale. Climate KIC’s investment in climate solutions like Littar is a bet on transforming the built environment for the better.

In the meantime, the start-up is focused on developing multiple versions of Littar, each with varying amounts of glass and plastic, to maximise its potential applications.

Debbie is deliberate about the pace of growth. “We have learned step by step, but as we want to create a sustainable company, we know that growth has to be steady, making a change in CO2 reduction is more important to us than just making money. It’s a long road, but ultimately, we know we brought the correct materials with us.”   

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