Engineering360: "MIT’s Materials Trifecta: Stronger Concrete, Recycled Plastic, Reduced Emissions"

This is good news. PET products are everywhere. Soon, back in National Parks, if you can afford the jacked up entry fees.

Anything that allows the use of less finite natural resources is very beneficial to us all.

The building industry is booming again, all over the world.and we are running out of sand in many places as well.

Does this mesh: From Hospital Waste to Durable Concrete

Maybe they should talk?

It seems that everyone wants to jazz up concrete and asphalt with just about every waste or agri-product imaginable - tires, plastic, hemp, etc.

There is immense need, albeit not especially manifested in the marketplace, for plastic to be reused as a general purpose lumber where flammability (fire safety) and extreme structural service are not over-riding concerns. The MIT researchers should be working on this by coming up with a way to clad various waste thermoplastics extruded as lumber with a UV blockage or dispersant coating that will last through heat and freezing and pestilence (atmospheric, marine, aquatic) for at least 50 years.

It seems that everyone wants to jazz up concrete and asphalt with just about every waste or agri-product imaginable - tires, plastic, hemp, etc.

There is immense need, albeit not especially manifested in the marketplace, for plastic to be reused as a general purpose lumber where flammability (fire safety) and extreme structural service are not over-riding concerns. The MIT researchers should be working on this by coming up with a way to clad various waste thermoplastics extruded as lumber with a UV blockage or dispersant coating that will last through heat and freezing and pestilence (atmospheric, marine, aquatic) for at least 50 years.

It sounds like this may be a useful process for used carpeting as well.

Built some various ferrocement stuff in the early 1970's (boats, docks, wall panels, tanks, etc.), but the most fun was a few years later when I connected with a retired ''carpet guy'' who was sold on ''carpetcrete''. I did the building code work for the little ''carpetcrete'' workshop dome in his backyard. All hand lay up with pearock mortar on steel rod pattern to which the carpet remnants were tie wired. He cut the doors, windows, AC openings in the finished 60-65 mm thick shell.