http://www.africanews.com/2024/08/25/egyptian-start-up-turns-plastic-waste-into-tiles/
TileGreen, which started three years ago, aims to make the country's construction industry more environmentally friendly.
TileGreen, which started three years ago, aims to make the country's construction industry more environmentally friendly.
So much blablabla. Where do they get it from? What "tiny shards" are that supposed to be? Why do they then mention regular plastic waste, which are clearly not "tiny shards"? How stable is the product they make (both time and force)? What can it actually be used for? Does it need new plastic mixed in? Is it going to break down to micro plastic real quick? This is pure green washing.
Seems to be a greenwashed scam I would say based on their website. Their tech document is highly suspect.
It's downcycling into pavers and roofing tiles, which is pretty much the most you can hope for with soft plastics with today's technology.
The resulting products cannot be used for anything else after they wear out.
To say nothing of leaching chemical runoff, questionable longevity of the bricks/tiles, shedding microplastics, inconsistent mechanical properties limiting use as construction materials, etc.
This process of shredding plastics, melting, adding sand, and shoveling into molds, has been known for a long time, and there are numerous videos showing entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries using it.
Here's a video from 2015 about a downcycler in Cameroon, and it says the guy had been doing this for 15 years already back then.
The point being, these things still break down and contribute microplastics to the environment and leach out their chemicals, especially when walked on, as they are being used for.
This is greenwashing, and with the egyptian governments laundering of state funds into their own pockets, I doubt anything beneficial will come from this.
WILL BYBLOCK LEACH OR PUT MICROPLASTICS INTO THE ENVIRONMENT? ByBlock is a high-performing, insulating building material and is not intended to be exposed to the elements without an exterior covering. This could be one of any readily available products in the market; weatherboard, stucco, paneling, etc. This will protect ByBlock from weather, UV and any environmental degradation.
That's not a great answer on their FAQs. Basically as soon as any building lacks proper maintenance, it's able to degrade.
How much energy does it use? Is the use of energy really worth the tradeoff of recycling the plastic? Because that's often a big issue.
Plastic waste recycling is primarily done by shedding the plastic into tiny shards. Sometimes it's even sorted by color
This is bad, why? Because our problem is plastic production, any reuse that does not reduce production is meaningless at it would all still break down into microplastics and new plasticts would still be produced.
Nor recycling, no reuse, just abolishing the wode spread use of plastic. Plastic should be kept for tasks that are not convinced based, but rather exclusive to plastic (like medical usage, not like saving costs cause it's cheap)
Now that's fricking science fiction and I love it!
Polymer based building material. Very cool Egypt!
If we could just work out how to efficiently mill waste plastic into 15 μm or so sizes, we'd then be able to mix the plastics directly into our wheat flours and whey protein powders. Why try to beat plastic when we could just become plastic?
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