Trigger Warning: Community contains mostly bad environmental news (not by choice!). Community may also feature stories about animal agriculture and/or meat. Until tagging is available, please be aware and click accordingly.

🪲

Aussie Zone Rules.

Golden rule - be nice. If you wouldn’t say it in front of your ~~grandmother~~ favourite tree, don’t post it.
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. You are allowed to denigrate invasive plants or animals.
Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. Except invasive plants or animals.
No porn. Except photos of plants. Definitely not animals.
No Ads / Spamming. Except for photos or stories about plants and animals.
Nothing illegal in Australia. Like invasive plants or animals. Exotic microbes and invasive fungi also not welcome.
Make post titles descriptive with no swear words. Comments are a free for all using the above rules as a guide. Fuck invasive plants and animals.

🐝

/c/Aussie Environment acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, sea and waters, of the area that we live and work on across Australia. We acknowledge their continuing connection to their culture and pay our respects to their Elders past and present.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Recycled roads pave the way to a sustainable future (techxplore.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

New roads mixed with recycled plastics at ten sites across Victoria will demonstrate a viable circular-economy solution to the nation, experts say.

Project lead, RMIT Associate Professor Filippo Giustozzi, said the team will also produce best-practice guidelines on the use of recycled plastics in asphalt roads.

"If Australia's 537 local governments each used a small amount of recycled plastic in the many roads they resurface each year, then nationally we'll have created a large end-market for recycled plastic."

"The performance of roads can actually be improved with the additions of recycled material, such as plastic and rubber, to be more durable against traffic and resistant against aging," Giustozzi said.

Austroads Chief Executive Geoff Allan noted increasing interest in exploring the viability of repurposing recycled waste plastic, and said Austroads was leading ground-breaking work to investigate the most suitable types of plastics for use in roads.

top 11 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's been numerous articles that have come out in regards to how bad this is. The plastic in the roadways generates microplastics and nanoplastics that run off into the sides of the road and reach places that they wouldn't have otherwise. It's important to use plastic, but not if it's going to cause significant ecological damage over time.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

If the best idea for solving a pollution problem is to stuff it inside cconstruction, then humanity really isn't getting on top of this.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do we not need to worry about the plastic leaching into its surroundings?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

yes. Yes we do.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How much PFAS is in the runoff I wonder?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

All of it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought asphalt was already the most recycled material.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

It is. Apparently we need a lot more roads than even that reuse can meet, and that demand has its own consequences.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Public transit and other more efficient means of transport all make more sense than cars.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The title is batshit.

2 options; we add editorial bias and change it (which I've done to a couple), or just ignore it as news.

Option 2 bothers me the most because then we miss what's out there. You need to read about the shit to know what's good.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This is an incredibly stupid idea.

Asphalt is one of the single most recycled materials in the world already. Why would you mess with that?

Now you want to introduce plastic into that when we already have a microplastics problem from other sources.