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Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
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Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#62When the concrete weathers, will the plastic in the bricks turn into micro-plastic?
The plastic has already been produced, so it's already an environmental problem, this repurposes it, one way or another it's going to break down and end up somewhere.
Plastic in a properly designed landfill doesn’t end up in people’s bloodstreams.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#63This is brilliant. It's like asphalt, which is just concrete (cement, sand and lime) with some of the cement replaced with oil/tar. This is that same idea but using plastic not oil/tar. Truly brilliant. It's a new type of composite building material.
The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…
Clay and other concrete based bricks must be cheap enough already, and work well.
If we intend to reuse plastic in bricks, maybe use those bricks for building things in and around landfills or things like storing nuclear waste - so that toxicity is concentrated. Otherwise, plastic bricks seem like one of those things that will be discovered to be toxic eventually.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#64Do people of color ever roll their eyes at websites like this? Does it ever just seem silly?
edit: I am white, and my question is not for white people. I call it “peopleofcoloronhackernews” :^)
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#65Do people of color ever roll their eyes at websites like this? Does it ever just seem silly? edit: I am white, and my question is not for white people. I call it “peopleofcoloronhackernews” :^)
"POCIT" was too good of an acronym to pass up on.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could paint them once installed, like nearly every building on the planet. Simple problem, simple solution.
> They could paint them once installed, like nearly every building on the planet. Simple problem, simple solution. perhaps with a lead paint! that'll make everything better. "sealing" a toxic material is not a solution when that seal can be broken by scraping it. let's face it, this is a toxic material that doesn't belong in our homes or our society.
Then get rid of everything plastic you own.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#67This is brilliant. It's like asphalt, which is just concrete (cement, sand and lime) with some of the cement replaced with oil/tar. This is that same idea but using plastic not oil/tar. Truly brilliant. It's a new type of composite building material.
The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…
The article you cite indicates that many of these chemicals come from plastic additives. Couldn't these be removed in the process of preparing the plastic,y? The OP indicates they have to select out only the plastics that bind well with the concrete.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which deadly diseases has plastic been linked with? Is the endocrine content of BPA any worse than drinking soy milk? Bioaccumulation of microplastics may be a different story. It may pose an inflammation risk, serve as a safe harbor for bacterial colonies, or be carcinogenic, but as far as I'm aware there haven't been any studies showing this.
Because we need studies (ideally, funded by the same corporations that poison us) to tell us that having increasing quantities of plastic in our blood, lungs and other organs is bad. What happened I wonder to the precautionary principle? Maybe that's going to be our collective lamentation when we crash at warp speed into some sort of great filter.
The precautionary principle is a great way of slowing progress to a crawl. The only way to solve massive problems like the things you’re afraid of is to make as much progress as possible as quickly as possible.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They could paint them once installed, like nearly every building on the planet. Simple problem, simple solution. perhaps with a lead paint! that'll make everything better. "sealing" a toxic material is not a solution when that seal can be broken by scraping it. let's face it, this is a toxic material that doesn't belong in our homes or our society.
Then get rid of everything plastic you own.
I actually don't have all that much in comparison - packaging is still hard to get rid of, since most of it is non-recyclable.
but, telling others to get rid of plastic while praising plastic (in other comments) doesn't really help the issue that it is a pollutant, flammable, and an overall problem for our environment.
Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete
#70Mixing plastics with asphalt has been tried for roads in India for many years now. There is one stretch near where I live which was done 10+ years ago. There is an official policy on trying this, as a pilot, for any agency that wishes to use it. See: https://www.prakati.in/use-of-plastic-for-road-construction-...
The road which I use occasionally seems reasonably good as roads go. Unless you see the boards informing users about the mixing of plastic you wouldn't know.