Kenyan woman invents environmental breakthrough: Bricks our of plastic waste.

[brush]

This link has a great video that shows the potential to clean up the planet and produce useful building materials.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/18/2016763/-Kenyan-woman-invents-method-to-turn-plastic-into-construction-cubes-that-are-stronger-than-bricks?detail=emaildkre

[handmade34]

1. this is awesome!

the video for you folks who don't want to take the extra step... worth watching

[UpInArms]

7. So very cool!

Great innovation and use of a noxious waste product.

[LaMouffette]

2. Cool, cool, cool! Thank you for posting!

I read somewhere that a plastic bag in a landfill can last for 1,000 years, breaking down into smaller and smaller bits, but never going away completely. That quality would be nice to have in construction materials.

[tblue37]

3. Big K&R. nt

[jeffreyi]

4. Good.

Excellent. Hope this effort succeeds and spreads.

[niyad]

5. Wow!!!! Incredible and wonderful. What an amazing young person!

[3catwoman3]

6. She could partner up with the 4 Ocean guys, who remove...

...plastic waste from the ocean.

[brush]

8. That would be a fantastic partnership. It could go worldwide.

All the plastic trash in the oceans would be an endless supply, and with sand from ocean beaches, they could have plants set up on shores all over the world.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

31. Strange as it sounds, we have a world wide sand shortage.

An example article: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand

I wonder if other types of waste could substitute for sand. The plastic is a binder, like portland cement in concrete, so maybe some other ground up waste could be the aggregate that gets bound.

[brush]

32. Didn't she say in the video that sand is the binding material?

You say there's a shortage of sand?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

33. Plastic is the binder; sand is what is being bound.

As for the shortage:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/illegal-sand-trade-india-mafia-murders-vince-beiser/11779570

[brush]

37. Wonder if particularly fine sand is needed for this product?

[csziggy]

34. Is most of the glass being recycled back to glass?

If not, it could be broken up to replace the sand. Sand and glass are both silica, aren't they?

Oddly enough I grew up in an area where sand used to be a real nuisance leftover from the main industry, phosphate. When my grandfather was working for Swift & Co., he designed the process by which phosphate was refined and a main waste product was the sand matrix (another by product was clay slurry).

Although they sold a lot of the clean sand for use in concrete and a lot of concrete block houses in that area were made from phosphate sand, at one point the massive amount of sand from one phosphate plant was stockpiled in a huge pile, known as Sand Mountain. In flat Central Florida, this huge pile of sand (200 ft. tall) stood out and became a tourist attraction. Skiers from Cypress Garden skied down it for big events.


https://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/fort-meade-florida.html

As they say on the above website, in the 1960s new technology made it practical to re-process the sand and extract more phosphate from the sand, so Sand Mountain is no more. What the article does not mention is that my father improved on the process his father invented and managed the plant that took down Sand Mountain.

It was just all in the family.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

38. THAT's a sand pile!

Thanks for the link and history lesson. I'd never heard of Sand Mountain before.

[csziggy]

40. Here is a more in depth article with a picture of my grandfather!

And mention of my Dad.

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~crackerbarrel/Sand%20Mt.html

[Hermit-The-Prog]

44. One built the mountain and one took it down.

[Goodheart]

9. Plastic pavers are probably quite hot.

[brush]

10. And?

[getagrip_already]

20. good insulators are very good building materials in all climates....

If that is what you are getting at, it is a non issue. Insulation will moderate indoor temps, not make them more extreme.

The real issue with plastic, depending on what kind it is, is that it gets soft when it gets hot. But the most common recycled plastic, pet, has a relatively high glass transition temp. It is fine even in a hot car in summer.

Some kinds are also flammable, but so is wood and straw........

[brush]

27. Remember, the product is half sand so that factor lessens flammability.

[doc03]

11. Can't believe nobody done that already. They make

boards from plastic and parking curbs. They show them as pavers I wonder how they would for building. I am thinking about them maybe being highly flamable. Maybe there is some kind of flame retardant they can use?

[brush]

12. The video mentions plans to produce bricks also.

And because they would weigh a lot less than regular bricks there would lower transport costs. There should be a lot of uses for them.

[trof]

14. And you could probably use glue instead of mortar.

Using a glue gun instead of a trowel would be a lot faster.

[brush]

25. Yes, another weigh saving innovation.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

43. Giant Legos -- no glue. :)

[brush]

26. The bricks would be half sand so they wouldn't be any more flammable than say...wood,...

a universal building material.

[csziggy]

36. Wood composite boards are also flammable - but they can be treated with fire retardants

Wood-Plastic Composites Are More Desirable With Fire Retardant Treatments

Summary

Wood composites made with highly flammable plastics are increasingly being used in a wide range of applications. Such applications include decking boards and other exterior products around homes in the wildland-urban interface. Tests have shown that fire retardant treatments can reduce the potential contribution of the wood-plastic composites to a fire.

Wood-plastic composites are widely available for some building applications. In applications such as outdoor decking, these composites have gained a significant share of the market. As part of efforts to address fire concerns in wildland-urban interface, the Forest Products Laboratory has been examining the fire performance of wood-plastic composites.

As a follow up to initial studies on commercial decking products and untreated wood-plastic composities, Forest Service scientists and international visiting scientists from Turkey evaluated fire retardant treatments for these composites. Scientists conducted heat release rate tests at the Forest Products Laboratory on untreated and fire-retardant-treated wood-plastic composites to determine the effectiveness of the fire-retardant treatments.

The rate of heat release due to combustion is an important parameter in the ability of a burning material to spread rapidly and contribute to the intensity of a fire. Studies showed that increasing the wood fiber content in wood-plastic composites significantly improved the fire performance to that of the plastic alone. Adding fire retardant chemicals, particularly ammonium polyphosphate, was also shown to be effective in improving the fire performance.

https://www.fs.fed.us/research/highlights/highlights_display.php?in_high_id=6

I'm sure building bricks of this sand/plastic mix could be treated if needed. Tests should be done before building, though.

[TNNurse]

13. Someone with a lot of money (Bezos)

needs to throw a lot of money at her and give her the support she needs. She could do some much for cleaning the oceans and building homes for those in need.

[ancianita]

17. Yes. This.

[bucolic_frolic]

15. Innovation like this has been all over YouTube for years

A Scottish farmer paving roads with plastic waste ... an island dweller distilling plastic in a sealed boiled into diesel fuel ... paving blocks for patios, benches, boards.

It never goes anywhere. The innovation is not in the making of the product. The innovation is in making it economically profitable to the right people to promote, distribute, buy, and sell the output.

Retailers resist, wholesales resist, drillers and frackers resist, iron manufacturers resist, I daresay some labor unions that support those industries resist.

Sorry to burst the bubble, but it's never as simple as making a better product that is environmentally friendly.

[Pantagruel]

22. I suspect

the key element is the energy needed to get to extremely high heat for fusing the materials? Is it economically feasible, does the process itself pollute and then the cost?

[brush]

30. Seems it's already up and running and not encountering the US market...

obstacles you describe.

[ancianita]

16. Seriously great innovation. Thanks!

[japple]

18. I love watching these videos and feel so hopeful that someone will help this

beautiful woman and her fledgling company and protect them from those would prey upon her and take away all that she and her people have done.

[brush]

29. They should go on the show "Shark Tank" to get further investment.,,

as they have up and running proof of concept.

[Oldem]

19. This is so promising that I hesitate to rain on the parade.

Plastics are full of chemicals. The Consumer Reports article I'm linking says we don't know that any of these chemicals are harmful to human health, but tests are ongoing. Personally, I'd want to know where the plastic to make the bricks of my home come from, and I'd want to know that tests prove these plastics are safe. There so many kinds of plastic, and formulas differ. We once thought tobacco and DDT were safe, and there are many other examples of our getting things wrong, with deadly consequences.

[link:https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/most-plastic-products-contain-potentially-toxic-chemicals/|

[getagrip_already]

21. first world thinking.....

If you don't have a home, your thought process is much different. Is it strong? Will it survive an earthquake, or high winds, or ..... Is it affordable? That is a low level of maslow's hierarchy. Will it kill me in 50 years is sadly way up on top.

The plastics being used are what has been used for things like water bottles and food containers. Yes, food containers can contain some nasty byproducts, but using them in construction is a very different beast.

You wear things every day you would never eat food out of. You are living in them. You drive them. You travel in them. You wear them on your face.

[brush]

28. Remember the product is half sand. After production it becomes...

another substance than plastic.

[Demovictory9]

23. kicking to watch later

[crickets]

24. Great step in the right direction. K&R for visibility.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

35. I'd love to try this on a very small scale ...

She mentions producing up to 1500 bricks a day. I'd like to try making a batch of 50 or so, but I'm scared of what I don't know about what's in the stink when you melt plastic.

[Brother Buzz]

39. Cool idea, but a bit of caution

Unless they engineer in a bit of UV stabilization, the bricks will deteriorate in a few short years.

[brush]

41. How so? Plastic is said to last for 1000 years in landfills.

[Brother Buzz]

42. Plastic bottles may last a thousand years buried in a landfill, but...

exposed to sunlight (UV), they become brittle in a year or so. UV light is an enemy to most plastics unless UV blockers and stabilizers are engineered into them.

[brush]

45. Could be, but after the process it becomes another substance.

A mixture of sand and plastic.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

46. What we really need is to not use nearly as much plastic, period.

Tremendous amounts of energy is used and pollution generated in the numerous chemical processes that go into making plastic raw materials and finished products. We need to drastically reduce the usage of plastics in our lives.

Just like paper, glass and metals recycling, you can never recover the energy and pollution generated or undo most of the physical damage to the planet from mining and other resource extraction processes or from the various manufacturing processes used to make products.

I commend this lady for her work and recycling is great but over-hyped as a solution.


KY..... ......

[brush]

47. She's not making plastic. She's killing two birds with one stone so to speak...

cleaning up the environment from plastic waste and using it for building materials. IMO that's two positives. I say kudos to her. The oceans and landfills everywhere are overrun with plastic that can last for hundreds of years.