11mo ago

Egyptian start-up turns plastic waste into tiles

www.africanews.com

Egyptian start-up turns plastic waste into tiles | Africanews

TileGreen, which started three years ago, aims to make the country's construction industry more environmentally friendly.

15 comments

So much blablabla. Where do they get it from? What "tiny shards" are that supposed to be? Why do they then mention regular plastic waste, which are clearly not "tiny shards"? How stable is the product they make (both time and force)? What can it actually be used for? Does it need new plastic mixed in? Is it going to break down to micro plastic real quick? This is pure green washing.
- Seems to be a greenwashed scam I would say based on their website. Their tech document is highly suspect.
  https://tilegreen.org/#Product
  Direct Google Drive document they link.
  
  It's downcycling into pavers and roofing tiles, which is pretty much the most you can hope for with soft plastics with today's technology.
  The resulting products cannot be used for anything else after they wear out.
  To say nothing of leaching chemical runoff, questionable longevity of the bricks/tiles, shedding microplastics, inconsistent mechanical properties limiting use as construction materials, etc.
  This process of shredding plastics, melting, adding sand, and shoveling into molds, has been known for a long time, and there are numerous videos showing entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries using it.
  Here's a video from 2015 about a downcycler in Cameroon, and it says the guy had been doing this for 15 years already back then.
- Plastic waste recycling is primarily done by shedding the plastic into tiny shards. Sometimes it's even sorted by color
This is bad, why? Because our problem is plastic production, any reuse that does not reduce production is meaningless at it would all still break down into microplastics and new plasticts would still be produced.
Nor recycling, no reuse, just abolishing the wode spread use of plastic. Plastic should be kept for tasks that are not convinced based, but rather exclusive to plastic (like medical usage, not like saving costs cause it's cheap)
If anyone wants to get something like this on the americas: https://www.byfusion.com/
Now that's fricking science fiction and I love it!
Polymer based building material. Very cool Egypt!
- How is this new, let alone sience fiction?
If we could just work out how to efficiently mill waste plastic into 15 μm or so sizes, we'd then be able to mix the plastics directly into our wheat flours and whey protein powders. Why try to beat plastic when we could just become plastic?
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15 comments