Developers see hope in using plastic waste in concrete

A new project in Pennsylvania will transform hard-to-recycle plastic — actually all types of resin — into a sandlike concrete additive.

Equipment is arriving at a 14,000-square-foot facility in York, Pa., that will be home to the Center for Regenerative Design and Collaboration’s patented approach aimed at diverting plastics from both the environment and disposal. It is an approach that has caught the attention of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a nonprofit group backed by some of the biggest names in the plastics industry that works toward ending plastic pollution.

The York facility will use a process developed and refined by CRDC at a pilot facility near San José, Costa Rica, that now will also ramp up to full production thanks to a low-interest loan from the alliance to kick-start commercialization.

CRDC expects to be able to process a combined 26,400 tons of plastic waste each year between the two locations once they are running at full capacity. The end product is called Resin8, which is a take on the resin identification code, explained Donald Thomson, chairman and founder of CRDC, in a Sept. 14 interview from Costa Rica.

“We can deal with the entire waste stream of 1 through 7 [plastics]. And that’s why we call our product Resin8. That’s why we branded it Resin8. It’s kind of like the eighth resin,” he said.

Thomson thinks CRDC has cracked the economics-vs.-environmental code to create a product from troublesome plastic waste that will not only be valued by end users in the concrete industry but also provide a substantial market for plastic that would otherwise be littered, thrown away or burned.

“It’s not hard to find plastic if you find a solution,” he said.

Steve Sikra is vice president and head of Americas for the alliance.

“Creating value and finding a use for hard-to-recycle plastic waste at scale are some of the challenges faced by recyclers in North America and around the world. With solutions like Resin8, we believe there is a strong promise to provide a sustainable building material while also addressing the plastic waste issue,” he said in  response to an email.

The CRDC process takes mixed plastics and transforms them into a sandlike like consistency that will easily blend in concrete. The company has overcome a past hurdle of plastic not adhering to other constituents in the concrete mix through a unique process, Thomson explained.

 

Between 2 and 10 percent of the concrete mix can be made up of Resin8 for structural applications, and that number rises to up to 30 percent for nonstructural uses, he said.

Considering the amount of concrete that’s used each year, the potential appetite for Resin8 is huge.

“I’ve always really strongly believed the best thing you could use waste plastic for was building appreciating assets in quality housing, specifically for those in need of housing,” he said.

A key to the effort, Thomson said, is getting both construction companies and waste management firms on board with regional projects to help ensure a supply of plastic as well as an end use.

The idea for Resin8 stems from Thomson’s earlier work designing water bottles that could then be used when empty as building tiles in the developing world.

“We quickly realized we are in this to solve this problem, and making one water bottle that turns into one building tile probably wasn’t going to change the world. It was the right thing. It was the right thing to go through that experience to learn that construction was probably the right area to move into,” he said.

Moving on from that idea allowed Thomson to dive into this larger project. “It freed up the mind space to look at how we can use all of the plastic. Essentially do the same thing, but maybe in a better way,” he said. “That bottle was the kick-starter for sure.”

The alliance is loaning CRDC a total of $4.8 million to build the new site in Pennsylvania and expand the pilot plant in Costa Rica. The low-interest loan is just what the fledgling effort needs to help make the economics work, Thomson said. “The financial assistance has been huge from the alliance. The alliance itself is an incredible industry entity. I don’t think there’s been anything like this before.”

The alliance also sees the global potential of the technology created by CRDC.

“The alliance is on a mission to end plastic waste in the environment — which means finding viable solutions to advance a circular economy and ensuring their ability to scale for impact. Together with CRDC, we can help drive environmental, economic and social value for hard-to-recycle plastics,” Alliance CEO Jacob Duer said in a statement. “We’re excited to deliver this solution to the North and Central American markets, with the aim of bringing this to a global audience.”

He views the potential for Resin8 to be substantial and far-reaching — as in around the globe. CRDC spent the last few years refining the process and establishing connections to launch on what he hopes is a wide scale. Along with these two locations, there also is another pilot facility in Cape Town, South Africa.

“Now that we’re in this, it’s now our objective to get as many of these facilities built as quickly as we can build them,” Thomson said.

Resin8 already has been used to help build hundreds of Habitat for Humanity homes in Costa Rica. Adding the material makes building materials up to 15 percent lighter or stronger, depending on the application, with up to 20 percent better insulation.

“I think that what we’re pleased about is we’re now convinced that there is an end-of-life use for this product,” Thomson said. “It’s circularity, but it’s circularity in the long term. We can take any [plastic] waste stream now and we can create [these] assets, long-term assets that are really required by the society at the same time that we’re cleaning up the environment. That’s not the case for all recycling methods in reality. We feel like we’ve got a hopeful and a practical way to move forward,” Thomson said..