Eco-Friendly Concretes with Recycled Plastic Aggregates

Abstract

Every year, in the world, the produced quantities of plastic amount to approximately 400 million tons. This implies a high level of plastic pollution and a growing decrease of available natural resources. Therefore, seems to be clear that there is a need to act in such a way as to reduce plastic pollution, safeguard natural resources and prevent the disposition of great quantities of waste in landfills or, even worse, the discharging into marine waters. This explains the need to implement processes of recovery and recycling of this plastic waste and their reuse in operable and practical products. Many studies analyzed the chances of employing plastic waste to produce cement and concrete, but the research about the use of polyolefins for the production of lightweight concretes is still limited. This study shows that the use of recycled polyolefins as substitutes of natural aggregates is a viable solution for the production of lightweight concretes by analyzing the influence of this kind of plastic on mechanical, physical and thermal performance, through experimental tests performed on four samples containing different amounts of plastic aggregates.