Using plastic waste to help solve sand shortages

Source - bbc article

I've mentioned the possible shortage of sand for use in concrete construction around the world before and - admittedly - haven't heard much of an update on that shortage in the past few years.

Today's article describes an attempt to solve the sand shortage - at least partially - as well as to use some of the seemingly endless supply of plastic trash that we continue to produce in our world by replacing some of that sand with ground up plastic pieces.

There isn't much detail, and I would want to know a few things before considering plastic as a sand alternative...

• Is the plastic post- or pre-consumer plastic?
• What polymers can be used for this?
• Does anything leach from the plastic over the life of the concrete?
• As the concrete structure wears, are microplastics released?
• How does the plastic change the hardness, toughness, strength of the concrete material?

In the long run, this might help extend our construction forward a bit, but I'm coming to realize that maybe we just need to use less stuff.

Heineken WOBO Bottle | Object in Focus | V&A

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Glass is a generally a fairly environmentally-friendly material, being made primarily of sand, so the idea of reusing glass bottles to build homes after they were used for their initial, beer-transporting purpose is brilliant.

I wish it would have worked out...and I also kind of wish I had one of the WOBO bottles, but with only 100,000 of them having been made, I'm guessing the sell for a pretty penny.

Least I Could Do: the Comic

Source: https://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20211003

 Yup...good questions there, young Rayne.

A Brief Scientific History of Glass

 

Source - https://glass.com.ng/glass-fact-history-glass/

Smithsonian magazine has a great article tracing both the history of glass and the modern scientific techniques used to reveal that history - everything from traditional archeology to radioisotope tracers to mass spectrometry.

Could be a really useful crossover between a chemistry and a materials science course, or just an introduction to a glass unit.

Afraid of heights? This is not the job for you | SciTech Now

As opposed to last week's less-then-professional-sounding narrator, this week's video host sounds like he belongs on local television reading the news or interviewing a woman who lost her cat.

He does, however, tell an interesting story of people climbing St Louis's Gateway Arch - one of my favorite places in the world, honestly - to figure out what was causing some staining on the underside of the Arch. One concern was the possibility of damage or corrosion on the surface of the arch.

Luckily, the exploration found that the stains are superficial...and they decided not to clean the Arch - as of the time of this video in 2016.