Social [Plastic Waste] Startup turns trash into construction-grade building blocks

SammyPops said:
and yet the tudy govt is not banning canadians companies from producing the exact same products for export.

glad to see our dictator using science for the environmental policy just like with covid
Click to expand...

From the post just above yours:

The federal government is banning companies from importing or making plastic bags and takeout containers by the end of this year, from selling them by the end of next year and from exporting them by the end of 2025.
 
ShadBo said:
From the post just above yours:

The federal government is banning companies from importing or making plastic bags and takeout containers by the end of this year, from selling them by the end of next year and from exporting them by the end of 2025.
Click to expand...


exactly. they are allowing canadian business to make/export tem for 2 more years. Danm near for sure they will extend that date too.
 
no problem with this. the affect that stuff has on wildlife is horrific, we can do better
 
I don't agree....

In older times I had used one bag for household waste multiple times...
Now...made from recycled materials...
So once I had lifted stuff weighting approx 11 -15 lbs...
Stuff had failed after few meters to walk.cos is made from 3X and more recycled plastic.
No problems...
I might use stuff designed for construction industry....
Cool " care about nature "?
I don't pay casual retail market price for bags used to collect construction waste...
I pay from my pocket just price company is paying for this...not casual retail market price.
Yeah...company can't sell me stuff if they will bear loss in $ ....
While with 0 profit yes...
 
idrankyourbeer said:
Retail stores can sell flexible straws in a package of 20 more, but the package cannot be displayed where a customer can see it without the help of a store employee.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/single-use-plastics-explained-1.6498061

wtf?! better hide these plastic straws from public view right next to the cigarettes and marijuana!
Click to expand...
The marijuana is in plain sight. You have to ask for help for service, but it's right there. Now edibles, those are under lock and key.
 
irish_thug said:
The marijuana is in plain sight. You have to ask for help for service, but it's right there. Now edibles, those are under lock and key.
Click to expand...

just wait until the plastic ban catches on in the states...

they'll give you a free gun to sign up for a bank account, but they'll do an extensive background check on you if you want to buy a bunch of plastic straws.
 
These worms can eat plastic. Not only that, but they can digest it too! In the fifth and final episode of 'Planet Fix', we speak to the scientists exploring how nature is fighting back against one of the world's biggest polluters.

 
Startup turns trash into construction-grade building blocks
By Leo Collis | Wed, October 18, 2023



If you ever played with Lego as a kid, it’s likely you dreamt of building a life-sized construction from the tiny plastic blocks.

A Los Angeles-based startup has taken that idea and built on it, creating bricks out of recycled plastic that are strong enough to be used in construction.

ByFusion takes everything from plastic bottles to grocery bags and puts it through a process that fuses it all together to create one huge plastic block called a ByBlock.

It’s an impressive use of an otherwise polluting material that often ends up in landfills or in water sources, impacting fragile ecosystems and breaking down into harmful microplastics.



Now, Tucson, Arizona, has embraced the ByBlocks after a hugely successful pilot project championed by city councilman Steve Kozachik.

After observing that contaminated plastic waste could not be sent for recycling and was costing the city around $300,000 a year in fees to public services to solve the problem, he looked at a different option.

According to Fronteras Desk, he asked residents to bring plastic waste to a collection point at his office. After collecting enough, he sent it to ByFusion’s facility in Los Angeles, where the plastic was transformed into bricks.

Those bricks have since been used to build raised flower beds and park benches, and the scheme has captured the attention of the city’s residents.

Kozachik soon spotted a problem, though. Driving all that waste to California and bringing the blocks back wasn’t the most environmentally friendly process in terms of dirty-fuel pollution from the vehicles on the journey.

With that in mind, ByFusion is bringing its technology to Tucson, where a $2.4 million facility will be built at a local landfill to make the ByBlocks on-site.

Just don’t call it recycling.

“Recycling is about taking the water bottles and the food products, you know, the things that have high value, and reconstituting them into pellets and then transforming those back into other, similar products,” ByFusion CEO and founder Heidi Kujawa told Fronteras Desk.

“We don’t burn it, we don’t melt it, we don’t liquify it,” she said. “We literally fuse it together.”

“But there’s very much a process that happens between water bottle one and water bottle two, that’s recycling. That’s not what we’re about. We really view ourselves as a re-purposer, we’re not changing the material that’s going in the machine.”

The Tucson project has so far collected over 100 tons of plastic, and ByBlocks might soon be used in the construction of municipal buildings.

It’s not the only unique material that might otherwise reach landfill that is being repurposed for construction. Researchers in Australia have been using coffee grounds in concrete mixture to make it up to 30% stronger.



ByFusion mostly uses all-electric processing units to make bricks that generate 83% less carbon pollution in production than concrete blocks, per the company website. It’s hoping to take its bricks global, and the goal is to reuse 100 million tons of plastic by 2030, reports a Fast Company article posted on the ByFusion site.

“Every community struggles with plastic waste,” Kujawa told CNN in 2022. “Putting in a Blocker [System] is going to help reduce landfill, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce transportation needs, all of that other good stuff.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/startup-turns-trash-construction-grade-083000732.html
 
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https://images.app.goo.gl/reVm7XbA4KFybyPC9

Copy_of_Headers_10_34_qzmaae


I'm hoping for Hempcrete, I don't want a bunch of decaying plastic around.
 
Arkain2K said:
Startup turns trash into construction-grade building blocks
By Leo Collis | Wed, October 18, 2023



If you ever played with Lego as a kid, it’s likely you dreamt of building a life-sized construction from the tiny plastic blocks.
Click to expand...


- I already love construction work. And those guys make it even better!
 
Arkain2K said:
These worms can eat plastic. Not only that, but they can digest it too! In the fifth and final episode of 'Planet Fix', we speak to the scientists exploring how nature is fighting back against one of the world's biggest polluters.

Click to expand...


tremors2.png
 
Arkain2K said:
Startup turns trash into construction-grade building blocks
By Leo Collis | Wed, October 18, 2023



If you ever played with Lego as a kid, it’s likely you dreamt of building a life-sized construction from the tiny plastic blocks.

A Los Angeles-based startup has taken that idea and built on it, creating bricks out of recycled plastic that are strong enough to be used in construction.

ByFusion takes everything from plastic bottles to grocery bags and puts it through a process that fuses it all together to create one huge plastic block called a ByBlock.

It’s an impressive use of an otherwise polluting material that often ends up in landfills or in water sources, impacting fragile ecosystems and breaking down into harmful microplastics.



Now, Tucson, Arizona, has embraced the ByBlocks after a hugely successful pilot project championed by city councilman Steve Kozachik.

After observing that contaminated plastic waste could not be sent for recycling and was costing the city around $300,000 a year in fees to public services to solve the problem, he looked at a different option.

According to Fronteras Desk, he asked residents to bring plastic waste to a collection point at his office. After collecting enough, he sent it to ByFusion’s facility in Los Angeles, where the plastic was transformed into bricks.

Those bricks have since been used to build raised flower beds and park benches, and the scheme has captured the attention of the city’s residents.

Kozachik soon spotted a problem, though. Driving all that waste to California and bringing the blocks back wasn’t the most environmentally friendly process in terms of dirty-fuel pollution from the vehicles on the journey.

With that in mind, ByFusion is bringing its technology to Tucson, where a $2.4 million facility will be built at a local landfill to make the ByBlocks on-site.

Just don’t call it recycling.

“Recycling is about taking the water bottles and the food products, you know, the things that have high value, and reconstituting them into pellets and then transforming those back into other, similar products,” ByFusion CEO and founder Heidi Kujawa told Fronteras Desk.

“We don’t burn it, we don’t melt it, we don’t liquify it,” she said. “We literally fuse it together.”

“But there’s very much a process that happens between water bottle one and water bottle two, that’s recycling. That’s not what we’re about. We really view ourselves as a re-purposer, we’re not changing the material that’s going in the machine.”

The Tucson project has so far collected over 100 tons of plastic, and ByBlocks might soon be used in the construction of municipal buildings.

It’s not the only unique material that might otherwise reach landfill that is being repurposed for construction. Researchers in Australia have been using coffee grounds in concrete mixture to make it up to 30% stronger.

ByFusion mostly uses all-electric processing units to make bricks that generate 83% less carbon pollution in production than concrete blocks, per the company website. It’s hoping to take its bricks global, and the goal is to reuse 100 million tons of plastic by 2030, reports a Fast Company article posted on the ByFusion site.

“Every community struggles with plastic waste,” Kujawa told CNN in 2022. “Putting in a Blocker [System] is going to help reduce landfill, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce transportation needs, all of that other good stuff.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/startup-turns-trash-construction-grade-083000732.html
Click to expand...

Plastics degrade in sun, your building would be made from trash.
I guess you can use them indoors, but they’re so bulky
 
chardog said:
Plastics degrade in sun, your building would be made from trash.
I guess you can use them indoors, but they’re so bulky
Click to expand...

Maybe good for basements and foundational layers.

Applying stucco or some other enapsulating material would prevent exposure to the Sun and the degradation caused by it.
 
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