Time to talk about plastics

First patented in 1907 by a Belgian chemist, plastic existed but was sparingly used until the 60’s and 70’s. As its popularity grew, it began to replace glass, metal, and ceramics as a cheap and convenient alternative for food storage, homewares, production, and so much more. In the short 60 years that plastic has been the material of choice, it has colonised the world! From the world’s highest and most remote mountaintops to the Mariana Trench, plastic has infiltrated ecosystems, soil, animals, and even humans!

The majority of plastics that we, as humans, use are single-use. The throw-away nature of this lifestyle has resulted in massive environmental damage. The broad range of plastic types available to us, like PET, PVC, ABS, etc., can make it difficult to classify and often results in plastics being placed in the ‘too hard’ basket. They wind up in landfills that pollute our local soil and waterways, or are exported to other countries where they do the same thing to someone else’s environment.

There are many different options and innovations for recycling/repurposing plastic. From clothing and prosthetic limbs to pyrolysis and the creation of fuel, each innovation fills a niche and requires specific technology. Revolve Your World considered multiple options for plastic recycling at the Norfolk Wave, eventually settling on the Resin8 concrete aggregate. But why? Unlike most other plastic recycling systems, Resin8 can process all plastic types from 1-7. We can process the commonly known recyclables like ice-cream containers, sauce bottles, etc., but we can also process soft plastics like glad wrap, chocolate wrappers, and plastic bags! This broad brush approach means we can accept all of the community’s plastic together (on the proviso that it’s clean), and yorlyi don’t have to worry about sorting into a million different plastic types. The other reason for choosing the Resin8 was that it would help to subsidise the demand for crushed rock aggregate. Norfolk is only so big, and constantly quarrying for rock is unsustainable. We can’t use the Resin8 aggregate in road base (due to its plastic makeup) but it’s excellent for use in slabs, curbing, bricks, etc., where there is less wear and likelihood of microplastic contamination into the environment—using a problem to solve a problem!

But how do we make it?

When plastic arrives at the Norfolk Wave, it gets sent across the Recyclapod bench for sorting and cleaning (fingers crossed it’s already clean). We then process the clean plastics through our granulator, where the plastic is chopped into 10mm pieces. We then feed the granulated plastic into two big metal hoppers. The plastic equipment consists of a granulator, five metal hoppers, a large paddle blender, an extruder, a water bath, a shredder, a conveyor, piping, and screw mechanisms. We have granulated plastic, hydrated lime, and carbon (from the carboniser we spoke about last week) inside the hoppers. An internal screw mechanism feeds each of these three components into the paddle blender. The paddle blender evenly mixes this combination before delivering it into a final hopper. The plastic/lime/carbon blend is then fed into the extruder, heated, and pushed out as a 25mm black sausage into a water bath. The reaction in the water bath expands the sausage and makes it porous. The sausages are left to cool and dry on a rack before being fed through the shredder and into a bulker bag for storage and later use.

Resin8 exceeds the ASTM standards for material performance and is the only material from plastic waste to improve the performance of structural concrete products. It has been rigorously tested to demonstrate increased compression strength, flexibility, fire resistance, thermal resistance, and acoustic properties. It can be used in structural and non-structural applications. If you’d like to read more about Resin8, check out their website, INTRODUCING RESIN8™ – CRDC Global.

With a more in-depth understanding of how we’re repurposing plastic at The Norfolk Wave, you can see why we must receive clean plastics. Remember, we can even recycle Glad Wrap! If you give us clean plastics, we can recycle them!

We’d also like to let everyone know that we’ve postponed the final opening celebration. It won’t be held on Saetdii 2^nd, stay tuned for an updated day!

For any questions, queries or concerns, contact as at hello@revolveyourworld.org or check out our FAQ’s at www.thenorfolkwave.com

Thaenks f aklan

Nat, Lil, Mandi and the revolve Your World team