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.

A potential solution to the sand crisis - FINITE

Actually 'melted down' to be reused? A different resource I read said, [t]he recycling process is a secret but talking over email,  Oza described the gist: “We use a non-toxic solution that allows the material to enter a more liquid state that can be recast or reapplied” in new Finite-based constructions.

That reads to me a lot more like either dissolving or de-polymerizing rather than 'melting'.

The actual information about Infinite comes at 4:30 in the above video: the reasoning, the general method of binding the desert sand, their testing, the project's future.

Sadly they are very tight-lipped about the method of binding the desert sand together. I'm really curious about it.

More reading about Finite...

• The Next Great Building Material? It Could be Sand from Deserts
• Finite's website

Sand shortage - update

I've mentioned the world's growing sand shortage before and thought I'd take a moment or two to update you with a few more articles.

• NPR - 7/21/17 - "World Faces Global Sand Shortage"
• Pulitzer Center - 7/28/16 - "The Global Sand Shortage"
• NY Times - 6/23/16 - "The World's Disappearing Sand"
• Independent - 12/6/17 - "Sand mafias and vanishing islands"
• South China Morning Post - 12/31/17 - "The world is running out of a resource, and it's not oil"
• Noccolls & Dimes - 4/23/18 - "Written in Sand"
• Wired - 3/26/15 - "The Deadly Global War for Sand"
• Dezeen - 10/11/17 - "Sand becomes 'increasingly scarce and expensive,' threatening glassmaking and construction"
• Dezeen - 7/18/17 - "Atelier NL calls for sand samples from all over the world to make region-specific glass"

Some folks are working on solutions, however, but I'll save that link for next week...

(Ooh, a teaser...)

Sand Castle Holds Up A Car! - Mechanically Stabilized Earth

I wouldn't want to build my house on a sand castle foundation, admittedly. In fact, I posted something about the dangers of that before

Reinforced sand, on the other hand, looks like it might be something a little different. Just adding in some fabric - or screening - between layers of packed sand makes for a far stronger product. It's almost like it's a composite.

(It is a composite, by the way, gaining new-found strength from the combination of strengths of the materials comprising the composite.)