China doesn’t want our recyclables but companies have a fix

I read a news article not too long ago that said some of the recyclables in the US are now going to landfills because China does’t want them anymore. Whoa! I didn’t know China had been taking the recyclables in the first place and now all of the effort by millions of people to sort recyclables is a huge loss, not to mention the environment.

However…

More recently I read what seems to be a terrific solution to this recycled waste. There are now companies using the recyclables to fix roads! Take a read:

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.

Continue reading on The Washington Post