this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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The more I see plastic being integrated into construction, the more I worry we're just postponing the inevitable. Concrete, stone and steel and basically reusable or recyclable and low impact on the environment when dumped. Plastic on the other hand slowly degrades into microplastics and seeps into waterways. Sometimes we forget that buildings don't last forever.
That's a fair concern, but, as you say, concrete is recyclable, and I would expect (though I admit I haven't looked for studies) that it still would be when it has some amount of plastic aggregate. If the plastic breaks down in the concrete, the microplastics should be trapped, and will be reincorporated when the concrete is reused.
Nothing is going to be a perfect solution to plastic, we need to find alternatives to its use, but in the interim it seems sensible to find effective ways to reuse it rather than just dumping it and hoping for the best.
Maybe the best solution was to trap it in our bodies all along! /jk