With China refusing to be the world’s garbage dump, landfills absorb the plastic waste.
Excerpt:
Until about a year ago, few people had reason to wonder where the plastic they tossed into the recycling bin ended up. It was being made into new bottles, bags, straws and beach balls, right?
Wrong: Almost half of it was shipped to China. Then, China announced last year that it didn’t want to buy the stuff anymore.
So, what should we do with all that plastic choking the world’s landfills? Why not recycle it and use it to build roads?
Bound together with plastic polymers, the asphalt will be cheaper and last longer than conventional pavement, according to independent experts.
One European firm already is combining plastic pellets with hot-mix asphalt to resurface roadways. A U.S. company says that once it finds financial backing, its product “could be deployed within six months” with a process that combines asphalt milled from the road’s surface with plastic urethane.
Mixing recycled plastic into asphalt is more common in India and Pakistan than in the United States.