Welsh Company Makes Recyclable Homes from Recycled Plastic

Written by Tina Casey

When you mash green jobs together with affordable housing and recycled plastic, something interesting is bound to happen, and it’s happening in Wales.  The Welsh company Affresol has launched a line of  low cost homes and modular buildings that use recycled plastic as a core structural material.  Affresol plans to market some of its product as homes that can fulfill community affordable housing needs while creating new green jobs in recycling.

Affresol’s primary innovation is Thermo Poly Rock, a material composed mainly of recycled mixed plastics, which pours and sets like concrete.  According to Affresol, Thermo Poly Rock has a number of advantages over concrete, but its main contribution could be a sustainable approach to housing in which homes are built on a semi-temporary basis with life cycle in mind.

Affresol and Recycled Plastic

According to a recent story in the Daily Mail, the plastic from about 9,000 recycled televisions or 7,200 computers is what it takes to build a three-bedroom house framed with Thermo Poly Rock.  That’s about 18 tonnes of recycled plastic (a tonne is 1,ooo kilograms and a U.S. ton is 909 kilograms).  Thermo Poly Rock is a thermoset polymer, which is a liquid plastic that sets in a permanent rigid state after processing.  Affrasol claims that the product is stronger than concrete with better flex and tensile properties.  Its recyclability is not so obvious at first glance because thermoset polymers typically cannot be melted down again and reformed into a new shape (for this reason thermosets were generally considered non-recyclable), but it’s possible that thermoset polymers can be recycled in granulated form and combined with other materials to manufacture a durable new product (something similar is going on in tire recycling).

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Boat Made of 16,000 Plastic Bottles to Sail from Cali to Australia

Written by Jerry James Stone

Published on March 22nd, 2009

   

British environmentalist David de Rothschild, author of Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, met with the San Francisco Conservation Corps on Wednesday to talk about “Plastiki,” a 60-foot catamaran made from recycled plastic (except for the masts), which he’ll use to sail from San Francisco to Australia: an 11,000 mile voyage!

The boat is made up of about 16,000 plastic bottles and is an “effort to raise awareness of the recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste.” saysRothschild. Skin-like panels made from recycled PET, a woven plastic fabric, will cover the hulls and a watertight cabin, which sleeps four. Only about 10 percent of the Plastiki will be made from new materials.

Two wind turbines and an array of solar panels will charge a bank of 12-volt batteries, which will power several onboard laptop computers, a GPS and SAT phone. He went on to say, “It’s all sail power. The idea is to put no kind of pollution back into the atmosphere, or into our oceans for that matter, so everything on the boat will be composted. Everything will be recycled. Even the vessel is going to end up being recycled when we finish.”

While as noble as that sounds, I can’t help but think that if this boat makes it…it will be on display for quite sometime. Maybe never recycled?

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Who Needs a Phone Book?

Written by Dave Dempsey

Published on August 10th, 2009

 

As the Internet becomes the resource more Americans turn to for phone numbers, lawmakers are beginning to examine the proliferation of unwanted phone books — and their environmental impact. A Minnesota legislator, Rep. Paul Gardner, has introduced state legislation to allow consumers to opt-out of receiving the paper directories, but is taking a wait-and-see approach on a voluntary initiative by phone services to allow convenient opt-out. Several other states have considered such a law, but none has passed.

Minnesota’s Pollution Control Agency estimates that only 12% of discarded phone books were recycled in 2006, meaning 11,538 tons of them ended up as municipal solid waste.  This is despite a 1992 state law that bans disposal of phone books as solid waste and requires phone companies to make recycling options available.  The agency also figures that if about 50% of state consumers opted out of receiving phone books, this would prevent 14,000 metric tons of “carbon dioxide equivalent.”  A Twin Cities blogger is so tired of receiving phone books he doesn’t need that he posted a video of his comical effort to return one. Meanwhile, a private nonprofit group, Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org, has signed up more than 3,000 Minnesotans who want to opt out. And there are other options.

Gardner is also the author of a proposed product stewardship law for the state.

Image credit:  Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Curbside Vs. Deposit and GHG Reduction

Written by Dave Dempsey
Published on December 15th, 2009


The beverage container industry continues to fight state and national container legislation despite evidence that such laws could contribute significantly to greenhouse gas reduction while providing energy, recycling and litter control benefits. The industry says community recycling programs, which put the cost burden on communities rather than container manufacturers, are a superior system for processing bottles and cans.

The latest weapon in the industry’s arsenal is a report commissioned by itself; the American Beverage Association (ABA) that says bottles, cans and packages made by its members are easily recyclable because community recycling programs that can handle them serve an overwhelming majority of Americans. Getting more consumers to capitalize on the programs, the study suggests, is the best way to recycle the containers.

But it’s not that simple.

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