New roads mixed with recycled plastics at ten sites across Victoria will demonstrate a viable circular-economy solution to the nation, experts say.
Project lead, RMIT Associate Professor Filippo Giustozzi, said the team will also produce best-practice guidelines on the use of recycled plastics in asphalt roads.
“If Australia’s 537 local governments each used a small amount of recycled plastic in the many roads they resurface each year, then nationally we’ll have created a large end-market for recycled plastic.”
“The performance of roads can actually be improved with the additions of recycled material, such as plastic and rubber, to be more durable against traffic and resistant against aging,” Giustozzi said.
Austroads Chief Executive Geoff Allan noted increasing interest in exploring the viability of repurposing recycled waste plastic, and said Austroads was leading ground-breaking work to investigate the most suitable types of plastics for use in roads.
There’s been numerous articles that have come out in regards to how bad this is. The plastic in the roadways generates microplastics and nanoplastics that run off into the sides of the road and reach places that they wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s important to use plastic, but not if it’s going to cause significant ecological damage over time.
If the best idea for solving a pollution problem is to stuff it inside cconstruction, then humanity really isn’t getting on top of this.