Recycled plastic! How’s that for a topic to get your heart racing on a Monday?
So we know that recycled plastic probably isn’t most people’s idea of a good time. But if you consider how many industries rely on plastic—healthcare, automotive, food and beverage, oil and gas and construction are just a few—and the dwindling availability of the petrochemicals required to make these plastics, then things get a bit more interesting.
Recycled plastic itself is a massive global market. According to Technavio, about 9.76 billion pounds of plastic were recycled in 2015. This is expected to grow to 12.05 billion pounds by 2020.
Want more info on the recycled plastic market? Check out Technavio’s new report.
And there are some people doing really interesting things with what is quickly become one of today’s most abundant materials.
From small experiments to research with big implications, these five unique applications for recycled plastic have one thing in common—they’re seeking to solve existing design, environmental and social issues with nothing but waste.
Art!
Composer Ida Lundén and set designer Johanna Mårtensson have designed and built an art installation at the Fylkingen space in Stockholm. The installation, called Orgel, is an organ built entirely out of contemporary materials, namely recycled plastic.
Beach huts
An architecture firm in Singapore recently unveiled plans for colorful beach huts built out of recycled plastic.
The elevated, pinecone-esque huts envisioned by the firm, called Spark, will provide an interesting visual aspect to the beaches of East Coast Park. But aside from the aesthetic factor, a main motivation behind the design is to raise awareness about the effects of dumping plastic into the oceans.
The huts will be built out of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a non-biodegradable plastic that makes up a good percentage of the waste found in oceans.
Fuel
This August, Jeremy Rowsell will undertake the first On Wings of Waste flight, an adventure that will see the British-born pilot fly from San Francisco to Alaska in a plane powered exclusively by recycled plastic.
The project’s Indiegogo page hails the recycled plastic fuel used in the flight as a “solution to plastic pollution”.
And it’s far more than just a stunt. On Wings of Waste is seeking to change people’s perception of the lifecycle of plastic by putting a value on it after its initial purpose, in the form of plastic to oil technology.
“Rather than pilling plastic into landfill we can now turn it into a fuel, recycling the carbon and thereby reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. The fuel itself is more efficient and cleaner than other fuels and can reduce green house gas emissions by up to 70%,” says a write-up on the Indiegogo page.
Floating schools
A Nigerian architect is using recycled plastic and a bit of ingenuity to tackle two problems at once.
The community of Makoko is on the waterfront of Lagos, with many families living in stilt homes on the water. This can make accessibility to schools difficult for some children in the area. So architect Kunlé Adeyemi has designed a school that floats on 256 plastic barrels.
47 students—who travel to and from school by canoe—currently attend the school, but it can hold up to 100, and can turn into a floating community space after-hours.
Reinforcement for cement
One of the biggest challenges for the construction industry is the price and quality of cement—how do you make the common building material stronger and more sustainable while keeping the price down?
Well, a team of researchers from James Cook University and Fibercon may be one step closer to finding the answer to this exact question.
The researcher are looking at a process to convert industrial plastic waste into a replacement for the steel that is used to reinforce concrete.
Dr. Rabin Tuladhar, one of the supervisors on the project told Sourceable that, “with our improved melt spinning and hot drawing process we now have plastic fibres strong enough to replace steel mesh in concrete footpaths.”
How would you re-use plastic waste? Tweet us and let us know at @Technavio.
