I was wondering how feasible the use of plastics would be in asphalt (guessing it would be as both are hydrocarbon based).
The above firm is doing it, and I imagine many others are as well. Just the little bit I read sounds like the use of plastic is beneficial to the road and the vehicles. I imagine there are downsides. But - at least the plastic is cheap!
I did some work at a firm that was looking at uses for the shells of coco beans. They found that ground up it could be used as a type of flour in baking, and they were experimenting with other stuff for it. I have no idea how big the market for coco flour is, but good for them if they can make money off of somebody else’s waste product.
Sort of like the OSB plywood that is so prevalent today. Although I bet those wood chips aren't considered “waste” anymore.
This firm’s examples are all geared to how environmentally friendly their roads are. I guess they are promoting it to clients that want to hear that sort of thing. (One of their examples was a new road to a nature preserve).
I would prefer “And because we use waste materials that people pay us to haul away; we can cut costs, deliver a better road for less money, and make a larger profit!”
Although I would imagine that the cost of breaking the plastic down into a usable form costs more than just buying the raw material.
There are reasonably affordable solutions to recycling, that work. However, the environmental movement wants de-industrialization.
I saw a video of an Asian company that feeds food waste to black fly maggots. From those maggots, important pharmaceutical and cosmetic chemicals get produced enmasse. The leftover waste is turned into fertilizer.
“Sort of like the OSB plywood that is so prevalent today. Although I bet those wood chips aren’t considered “waste” anymore.”
Very little of OSB and other wood composite products are from waste. The full logs are chipped up into chips and fibers for such products. There would not be enough waste to produce the amount wood composite product we use now. They even put whole logs between rollers to crush into strands to make “lumber”.