Enabling new avenues for plastic scrap

A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released in July says recycled plastics are an underused resource and that action is needed at the federal, state and local levels to improve their end-of-life management—a conclusion most of us would agree with. The paper suggests infrastructure projects could represent a viable end market for end-of-life plastics and tasks the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation to work together to promote and sustain a coordinated government response to end-of-life plastics that includes assessing such uses.

While incorporating recycled plastics into infrastructure products, including asphalt pavement mixes, drainage pipes and railroad ties, has attracted varying levels of commercial interest, the report notes only drainage pipes are a source of significant demand presently.

Some consider using recycled plastics in pipes downcycling, but others have a different perspective. Transforming single-use plastic packaging into durable goods such as pipes that are used for decades doesn’t necessarily sound like downcycling to me, though it’s not the bottle-to-bottle circularity that some consumer brands would like to tout. While demand is growing for food-grade and nonfood-grade recycled plastics for use in packaging, infrastructure products could offer an additional option for nonfood-grade material that doesn’t meet packaging manufacturers’ standards.

”Plastics are essential to modern society, and so is ensuring their circularity by exploring all possible avenues for their reuse and recycling.”

Advanced Drainage Systems, for instance, says it recycles more than a billion pounds of plastic in the form of shampoo and laundry detergent bottles, medicine bottles, bottle caps and carpet into its highly engineered products that remain in service for decades.

A potential concern with using recycled plastics in infrastructure, particularly in roadways, is the possibility of microplastics being released into the environment. The report notes that while studies evaluating the release of microplastics from these roadways are limited, research is underway that will offer assessments of the performance impact of using recycled plastics as well as the release of microplastics into the environment.

Plastics are essential to modern society, enabling innovations that would not be possible otherwise. Also essential is ensuring their circularity by exploring all possible avenues for reuse and recycling. But before we can explore recycling, collection rates need to increase. The report recommends the EPA work to identify policies and regulations to support and incentivize plastics recycling and take steps to facilitate collaboration among plastics manufacturers, suppliers, recyclers and industrial and infrastructure users.