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Putting Plastic to Good Use
#1
We know there is a huge problem when it comes to discarding plastic. It litters our grounds and oceans and kills marine life.
Below is one solution one man came up with after his daughter expressed her concern for all the plastic in the sea. She longed for a world with beautiful oceans where marine life would not be endangered, so he started a company called MacRebur to help in the reduction of plastic waste.

Quote:Most people nowadays recognize the problem that is plastic pollution and many are finding ways to fight it. From reducing personal plastic use to banning single-use plastic straws, both civilians and governments are trying to fight the ever-growing amount of waste we produce. Waste that can take thousands of years to break down. One of the people who’s taken a pro-active role in this fight is Toby McCartney, an engineer who seemingly found just the perfect use for plastic waste.

Toby McCartney, a Scottish man, has found a way to put all that plastic waste to good use. He started a company that creates pellets out of plastic waste and uses them to make roads.
This is good news!

[Image: plastic-waste-to-roads-macrebur-2-5e68e1...c__700.jpg]


Quote:The company, MacRebur, has its origin story detailed on its website:

“The idea was born when our CEO, Toby McCartney, was working in Southern India with a charity helping people who work on landfill sites as ‘pickers.’ Their job is to gather potentially reusable items and sell them to be turned from rubbish into something useful again.

Some of the waste plastics retrieved by the pickers were put into potholes, diesel poured all over them, and the rubbish set alight until the plastics melted into the craters to form a makeshift plastic pothole filler.”

However, McCartney quickly realized that councils in the UK wouldn’t be too happy about the idea of burning plastic and diesel, so he had to find a better way to execute the idea. Toby got together with his friends, Gordon Reid and Nick Burnett, to launch MacRebur in April 2016—the name being based on part of each of their surnames. From there, they started developing a technique and formula to achieve their goal—use plastic waste for road construction.

[Image: plastic-waste-to-roads-macrebur-5e68f5dad4672__700.jpg]

This is a great idea, but how does one take plastic and turn it into a compound to be used to make roads?


Quote:They take plastic from commercial and household use (the split is about 60 percent commercial and 40 percent household) and use a granulator to turn it into small pieces of no more than 5mm. Their website details the process: “Next, the plastic granules are mixed with our activator—it’s this that makes the plastic bind properly into our roads. Our activator is patented and what’s in it is a secret! This blend of plastic granules and the activator—let’s call it the MacRebur mix—then goes to an asphalt producer.”

Regular asphalt is made mostly from bitumen and stone. However, MacRebur’s technology replaces a chunk of bitumen used in the asphalt, which, in turn, decreases the use of fossil fuel. “We can do this because we are turning the plastic into its original oil-based state and binding it to the stone with the help of our activator,” they explained.

Will plastic be as strong as traditional roads?

Quote:In an interview with CNN, McCartney claims that because of their special formula, the roads they produce are 60% stronger than traditional roads. He also noted that the lab tests they ran project that the roads made from their product may last up to three times longer than regular ones.

“We went through about five to six hundred different designs of different polymers that we were mixing in before we found one that actually worked,” he said. “At the end of the day, plastic is a great product,” he says. “It lasts for long, which is a problem if it’s a waste product, but not a problem if we want it to last,” McCartney concluded.

In the end, this is what you get.

[Image: plastic-waste-to-roads-macrebur-1-5e68e1...4__700.jpg]

Looks great!  I hope this idea becomes established across the world. It would make a huge impact in reducing plastic waste.
I'm sure there are many other uses for recycled plastic if we put our minds to it. We can't continue discarding plastic into the landfills and oceans; it needs to be recycled.

See more pictures from the Source Article.
#2
Even better for the company, they must have practically no overhead or material costs, since their raw materials are literally other's folks' thrown away trash!


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Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.

Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’




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