U.S. recycled plastic bridge has huge market potential

On the Malika River in southern New Jersey in the United States, there is a 16.8-meter-long bridge constructed of only recycled soda bottles and plastic coffee cups. This bridge is unique because it is made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles and PS that is made from coat hooks. Mixing 65% of the polyethylene with 35% of the polystyrene, the resulting mixture is not only strong and not easily broken. As the addition of polystyrene fills the voids in the polyethylene like sea-surface structure, this material becomes very strong. The bridge has been used for more than one year so far, but the technical indicators are normal and the situation is very good.

Although this new plastic formula was invented in 1998, it was not until people raised the bridge that was built entirely of recycled plastic except the galvanized steel fastener on the Malika River in 2002. This unique bridge weighs only half of the weight of a wooden bridge or reinforced concrete bridge. It takes only 11 days to build and costs 75,000 U.S. dollars. The same traditional wooden bridge usually costs 350,000 U.S. dollars.

The doctor who invented this kind of material thinks that without the long-term reliability test, it is not suitable to use this technology to build large bridges on the expressway, but the performance of this concrete compound is indeed superior, exceeding their expectations. Lambeau, the US Army Corps of Engineers Research Center, said: "The recycled plastic bridge can be a good substitute for the small wooden bridge." Engineers of the Federal Highway Bureau said that this represents a breakthrough in the use of recycled plastics. Building bridges with recycled plastics will have great market potential.

The question of how long it will take for this type of bridge is that the director of the Federal Bridge Nuclear Technology Office, Levin, said: “Since there is no short-term material experiment method that can predict the structural performance changes of these materials after 50 years, the most reliable The method of predicting the performance of the bridge can only be the change of various structures during the monitoring of the bridge."