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Plastic Concrete: Building Bricks Made From Landfill Waste

Posted By Trey Farmer On September 21, 2009 @ 4:00 pm In Green Materials,Recycled

Materials,Sustainable Building | 24 Comments

sustainable design, green design, recycled materials, concrete, cement, henry miller, concrete thinking for a sustainable world, building materials

Recent RPI Masters of Architecture [1]

graduate Henry Miller has devised a way to reuse waste

plastic [2]

as an aggregate in cement, circumventing the energy-intensive process of plastic

recycling. By grinding up landfill-bound plastic and mixing it with portland cement, Miller was

able to create a material just as strong as traditional concrete made with mined aggregate.

The ingenious solution netted miller first place in the “Component Category” of the second

annual Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World [3]

competition.

[4]

[5]

[6]

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Using recycled materials [7]

is so hot right now, but using them as aggregate is hotter than

Hansel [8]

in a black shirt on a summer Sunday. While living in Albany, Miller saw many areas

cut their plastic recycling programs for the cheaper (now) solution of landfills, and noticed the

astounding number of brownfield sites that were simply being abandoned. Miller’s idea: Why

not use plastic waste as an aggregate in concrete and create a more sensible product. By

mixing together ground-up plastic with cement and soil reclaimed from the brownfields, Miller

was able to create a material just as strong as conventional concrete.

The Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World [3]

competition only asked students to

conceptualize a design, but Miller he was not satisfied with a mere idea. He actually used his

plastic concrete to build a screen and a wall. In doing so he showed that his ideas were viable

alternatives to the status quo and that there was no excuse to merely fall in line.

Describing his project, Henry Louis Miller states: “Recycling plastics [9]

is a difficult, energy

intensive process, and yields a product that is inferior to the virgin material. I have researched

the possibility of using granulated, post consumer waste plastics as the aggregate in concrete.

In this application, unlike plastics can be universally mixed with no adverse affects, heat

driven re-amalgamation is not required, and my early test results show the resulting product

is as strong as conventional concrete mixes (between 3000 and 5000psi.) As a result of using

plastic rather than conventional aggregate, the mining of new material to serve as aggregate

is not necessary.”

+ Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World Competition [3]

+ RPI’s Masters of Architecture [1]

[4]

[5]

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[6]

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URL to article: -into-waste-landfill-repurposes-concrete-http://inhabitat.com/plastic

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URLs in this post:

[1] RPI Masters of Architecture: http://www.arch.rpi.edu/

[2] waste plastic: -turns-facility-envion-http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/16/new

plastic-waste-into-10barrel-fuel/

[3] Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World: http://www.concretethinker.com/

[4] Image: -into-waste-landfill-repurposes-concrete-http://inhabitat.com/plastic

building-bricks/plasticconcreteed01/

[5] Image: -into-waste-landfill-repurposes-concrete-http://inhabitat.com/plastic

building-bricks/plastic-conc1/

[6] Image: -into-waste-landfill-repurposes-concrete-http://inhabitat.com/plastic

building-bricks/plastic-conc3/

[7] recycled materials: http://inhabitat.com../2005/11/30/vetrazzo/

[8] Hansel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoolander

[9] Recycling plastics: -wont-why-rant-http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/03/19/green

nyc-recycle-plastic/

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