A new plastic bottle manufacturing facility is coming to London, and India pushes forward with roads made of recovered plastic.
U.K.: Veolia UK has purchased a shuttered recycling facility with plans to manufacture plastic bottles from recycled material. According to Packaging BR, Veolia, a giant in the fields of waste management and environmental services, already collects 200 million plastic milk bottles each year. The new facility will allow Veolia to market a high-value product from that material.
India: Plastic bags, a wok, gas cylinders and other recovered material are what some roads are made of in India. The country recently announced cities with more than 500,000 people will be required to build roads using waste plastic. The polymer glue made from shredded waste plastic is cheaper than traditional construction, according to The Guardian, and it uses material that would otherwise go to landfill. But some say the material can break down and leach into the soil and water.
U.K.: Engineering firm Ricardo is teaming up with U.K.-based Recycling Technologies to push forward commercialization of a fuel made of residual mixed plastic waste. The goal is to use the fuel as a substitute for diesel and other fossil based heavy fuels. It could also be used as petrochemical feedstock.
