Plastic waste piling up? Let’s build roads and houses with them

 

A recent report on the sorry state of plastic pollution in Malaysia sent shockwaves through the local environmentally conscious community. Greenpeace reported that UK exports of plastic waste rose by 63% in 2020, compared with the year before.

Greenpeace Malaysia campaigner Heng Kiah Chun said globally only 9% of plastic waste produced had actually been recycled and 12% incinerated, with the remaining 79% ending up in landfills or the natural environment.

However, The Malaysian Plastics Manufacturers Association (MPMA) and Malaysia Plastic Recyclers Association (MPRA) fired back, saying Greenpeace had missed the big picture and that Malaysia’s recycling rate had seen an uptrend, reaching 31% by the beginning of 2020.

Irrespective of the specifics of their claims, what’s irrefutable is the fact that Malaysia has a massive plastic pollution problem – a problem that has been exacerbated by the boom in single-use plastics since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I saw this first-hand when I visited parts of Jenjarom, Klang and Kuala Langat which are hotbeds of profligate plastic pollution and burning.

This is a multi-faceted problem that requires thoughtful, layered solutions. Our primary push has to be to develop eco-friendly plastic alternatives.

Thanks to uproarious public support, the budding plastic alternatives industry is expected to grow from RM252 billion in 2020 to RM293 billion this year, globally.

Malaysia should throw its hat in the ring and develop such plastic alternatives as well. However, it’s important to remember that when it comes to such seemingly eco-friendly measures, fact should take precedence over hype. Just because something is touted as a plastic alternative doesn’t automatically mean that it’s more environmentally friendly.

For instance, paper bottles are all the rage in many progressive circles and are being proclaimed as being a viable, eco-friendly plastic alternative. However, many of these paper bottles still have thin plastic linings and require deforestation for the production of pulp.

In such a situation, we need to have a clear-eyed evaluation of the carbon footprint of both processes and choose the one that is less environmentally destructive. As I like to say: when in doubt, quantify.

Secondly, we need to not become the garbage dump of the world. To do this, we need to turn away the bulk of the inordinate amounts of foreign plastic waste that comes our way.

However, we don’t need to turn them all away as some high-grade plastics recycling can be a solid source of revenue. As CC Cheah, the vice-president of the Malaysian Plastics Manufacturers Association (MPMA) says, it makes sense to tap into the lucrative recycling industry, which nets some RM4.5 billion in annual revenue for Malaysia.

However, what about low-grade or mixed-grade plastics that are difficult to sort or aren’t worth recycling? Do we just heap them up in ever-burgeoning landfills or incinerate them and turn them into toxic, air polluting “airfills”?

Of course not, and this is where a little bit of creativity comes in handy. Why not use these non-conventionally recyclable waste plastics as building material? This is exactly what Sibele Cestari, a polymeric materials scientist from Queen’s University Belfast suggests.

He says: “Plastics are strong, durable, waterproof, lightweight, easy to mould, and recyclable – all key properties for construction materials. So what if all of this plastic waste could be converted into building materials for low-income populations? Existing initiatives are promising, but not yet reproducible on an industrial scale.”

Imagine using plastic “bricks” as building blocks for houses and even low-rise apartments. With the right incentives and an ample dose of ingenuity, this could become an exciting reality in Malaysia.

It would certainly be a much more environmentally-friendly alternative to building houses the conventional way as it utilises already existing plastic waste instead of using additional plundered resources from mother nature.

Another creative use of plastic waste is to use them as road-building material. Road tech company TechniSoil Industrial is doing exactly this in Los Angeles. It replaces bitumen – the viscous, oil-based substance that acts as an adhesive for roads – with plastic waste.

With this technology, TechniSoil claims that its roads can be 13 times more durable and last twice as long as conventional roads.

The good news is, they’re not the only game in town. Dutch company PlasticRoad has gone a step further by making roads entirely out of plastic waste. Buoyed by successful pilots in the Dutch cities of Zwolle and Giethoorn, they are now planning on taking it to market.

Malaysia needs to engage these companies or emulate them so we can turn our ever-burgeoning landfills into long-lasting, environmentally-friendly houses and roads.

This problem of plastic waste isn’t going away anytime soon. So it’s best we learn to repurpose it in creative ways so we can slowly start to unclog our plastic-laden drains and rivers, clear out our smelly landfills and make the air we share just that much more breathable.

The writer can be contacted at kathirgugan@protonmail.com. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.