plastic waste

Recycled plastic is used in some geo-synthetic mats for laying beneath road surfaces. Polyethylene Terephthalate Plastic bottles are recycled to make fleece jackets, used hikers and alike, but in both cases they need to be combined with new plastic as well because recycled plastic loses some of its mechanical properties.

I believe the solution to the plastic problem is to force the manufactures and suppliers to reduce the amount they use as useless packaging, and force a change in the new fast turnover reduced life cycle consumer culture. A turn to more biodegradable/recyclable plastics from renewable/sustainable sources. In Europe to meet recycling quotas we ship millions of tons of waste plastic to china for recycling, and households are continuously restricted and monitored to what and how much they throw away, local refuse collectors cannot cope with the volume. All of this just increases the cost of disposal.

Indeed, you are talking about one of the most important contaminants problems up to date.

The negative aspect in shipping waste plastic to China is that one day they will have to meet targets associated to this actual practice as they develop. By now it is still being a good practice.

An alternative solution is get into the replacement of plastics packaging and develop the "biopackaging" concept. I wil try to work in this concept based on an idea that came up to me recently.

Plastic will not bond at all, same as rounded pebbles are bad in concrete. Have you ever demolished concrete and seen how they emerge? Crushed stone plus assorted sands in the proper space filling ratio would be best.

You can probably dispose of a small % of ground plastic in concrete. Try a %...test it, add more..test it.

You might find that 5% plastic by weight gives you very bad unacceptable concrete.

a simple search gets some hits

drill here

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=plastic+%2Bconcrete

Its not a good idea to use plastic in road building. Tar and cement which are two primary binders can only accept a limited amount of plastic and the rest will be rejected. Further, plastics are of two types. Plastics which melt when they are heated are known as Thermal Plastics and the plastics which do not melt but catch fire when heated are Thermoset plastics. The thermal plastics are not a big concern as the recycling industry normally recovers them, reprocess them and then make new articles. The concern is the Thermoset plastic, plastic from automobiles which contain a lot of fibre and the thermoplastics have filler materials, and these are the concerns. At any cost, plastics must be kept away from the ground as they act as impervious layers which will not allow the rain water to seep into the ground and rechrage the aquifers. if the aquifers are not recharged, then we have water crisis and the loss of vegetation which fuels increase in CO2 and this is a chain reaction. Plastics of all kinds can now be reprocessed into fuels and such plants are coming up and the thermoset plastics must be reprocessed into fuels and the thermal plastics can go for recycling. Even the modern architecture is using porous cements which allows the seepage of water to recharge aquifers

< At any cost, plastics must be kept away from the ground as they act as impervious layers which will not allow the rain water to seep >

CR4 needs a new Blog:" Which Polymers are good for mixing with Bitumen/Asphalt to greatly improve Blacktopping Life of Roads-- and what is the Theory behind this success". I know of 2 :

• Polypropylene -Atactic catching on in West Europe/USA
• Piroplast in Russia

Why don't we continue with this?

<Plastics of all kinds can now be reprocessed into fuels and such>

So be it-GASIFY -to get Power/Energy. You do not have to ship to China any more.

Legislate suitably" Dispose all your waste plastic into a green Garbage Disposal Bag to go straight to the (town's/area's/city's) GASIFIER"

But the basic questions remain unanswered yet:

Can you ban the profit-driven water bottle--" Melting snow of the Alps/ Himalayas"

Can you ban the profit-driven gift-packaging from China into Birthdays/X-mas

Can you ban the Colas

Plastic waste, be it films, all those water, soda bottles, milk containers can be pelletized into various sizes [smaller the better 0.25mm-1mm ] but no more than 1-2mm. There is now a process that allows this. The application where these would work well are for aggregates for concrete. Lightweight precast panels and blocks with the addition of a foam or prefoamed process for low cost construction material for structures. Sound barriers is another application, crushable fill for blast mitigation.

We are not talking about using it as all the aggregate but 30% works.

Currently in the concrete construction material are EPS beads [Expanded Polystyrene beads] and Flyash that do contain dangerous toxic gases and when a high heat [Fire] is applied will expel these chemistry. It is the proper amount that needs attention.

But in regions where structures [houses] can benefit the most like in Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia and of the such, a cheap affordable insulated material is needed. This where the applicaton should be specified.

Let the discussion begin.

Although scrap material from manufacturing is reprocessed at plastic industry, and now the most of plastics can be used to produce gas (as Makulmahant has posted), there are a lot of compounds that are part of the transformation chain and they themselves contribute to pollution (additives, pigments, catalysts, others).

What if we start from reducing such chemicals and obtaining products wich are directly and 100% biodegradables? Surely we will get products with less lifetime and most people will not consider to buy them; but what if the products with such characteristics does not need to last so long (there are many that one person use only once and then goes the trash), for example EPS boxes for food delivery.