The Netherlands could become the first country to pave its streets with plastic bottles after Rotterdam city council said it was considering piloting a new type of road surface touted by its creators as a greener alternative to asphalt.
The construction firm VolkerWessels unveiled plans on Friday for a surface made entirely from recycled plastic, which it said required less maintenance than asphalt and could withstand greater extremes of temperature– between -40C and 80C. Roads could be laid in a matter of weeks rather than months and last about three times as long, it claimed.
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The plastic roads are lighter, reducing the load on the ground, and hollow, making it easier to install cables and utility pipelines below the surface.Sections can be prefabricated in a factory and transported to where they are needed, reducing on-site construction, while the shorter construction time and low maintenance will mean less congestion caused by roadworks. Lighter materials can also be transported more efficiently.
Can plastic really last that long, exposed to loads and UV? I've had the plastic cases of electronics literally crumble to dust because they were sitting next to sunny windows...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:47PM
Flat roof covering faces much of the same challenges. With the synthetic materials (EPDM, PVC, Polyolefines) approach is usually adding soot to the mix. I've read an analysis that studied how much EPDM suffers in full sunshine and they came to the conclusion that 0.2mm of the sheet became brittle, but stayed in place, while the remaining 0.9mm maintained the original specification over a course of some 10-20 years. To be taken with a grain of salt, because it was commissioned by an EPDM supplier, but the procedures described looked reasonably sound.
The bituminous materials use grit (small slate chips) as a protection on the top surface; much the same stuff that is applied to the asphalt of roads after they've been laid to add traction.
I would assume that an upper layer of soot/sand/grit enriched plastics gives a well usable road surface.But in how far that survives ten thousand 38 ton trucks a day rattling over it on a busy autobahn day, I have no clue.