Can we store plastic as lumber instead of dumping them into oceans?
I’m going to keep this short, problem is obvious we are dumping plastic into oceans, and we need to stop. This is just one river, among many that we’ve created. Please google plastic river, plastic beach, plastic ocean to see more for yourself. Every time I use any plastic I’m seriously ashamed for knowing where it’s going to go but doing it anyway.
I think if we can turn scrap plastic into things that are consumed in tons, then we can maybe change the fate of our oceans. This is the story of me trying to put the pieces together, not getting responses, my frustration, and request for help.
Let’s quickly look at some other infuriating facts to complete the story.
It turns out we are only recycling 5% of our plastic
Yep. It’s infuriating. We were putting all the waste plastic back in the containers that came from China, to go to “recycling facilities in China” obviously, “sometimes” they get recycled, most of the times, 95% of the times to be exact, they are burnt, or dumped back into the rivers.
Now China doesn’t want our shit anymore
This may be a good thing, maybe now, we can do something about this problem.
Traditional recycling is hard, making a pet bottle from a used pet bottle for humans to consume another drink out of, is understandably hard, expensive. Though, my idea is, what about making pavers, lumber? No one cares if my outdoor patio is made of plastic or pavers. It doesn’t rot, it doesn’t require maintenance, and maybe it’s the right type of thing to produce out of scrap plastic.
US and Canada consumed 327K tons of just residential pavers just last year, which is 10% of our entire plastic output already.
Plastic sidewalks, pavers, patios, decks ...
Only if there were plastic sidewalks that cities could consume… We could turn so many tons of plastic into sidewalks just by one city committing to use them as pavers, that way, we might annihilate almost our entire plastic output.
Just imagine San Francisco doing all sidewalks from downcycled plastic, bike paths, and whatnot, Berlin, Istanbul, Beijing. Residential pavers, driveways, we can all do this from downcycled plastic.
If it’s more expensive than other materials, cities should subsidize it like they subsidize clean energy. We should give new home certificates that say “This home stores 5 tons of plastic” “This site stores 50 tons of plastic” and thank them publicly.
I’m aware of Ocean Cleanup, I admire their efforts to bring back all the plastic we have already dumped. But if we don’t address what is going to happen to that plastic after we pick them up, who knows, they might go back to oceans again.
I think the crux of the problem is to turn them into store-able items that are consumed in gigatons. I’m estimating from 2006 numbers we must be consuming 300M m3 of wood in the US, which would be 300M tons of plastic, which is 90% of our plastic output per year.
I’m not suggesting to replace all wood, but let’s just keep that number in mind.
Here is how you turn any plastic into lumber
Plastic fence boards, plastic patios, plastic outdoor furniture. If we can meet the code, why not construction lumber? This is a known thing and it is called Plastic Lumber. But why is it not mainstream already? Why plastic alternatives that are reducing the load on our dumpsters, are not even known by consumers?
I went to the building department here in California and talked to them, they said it sounds amazing. They also said, plastic is a better insulator, stronger and should work. I felt encouraged, the same engineer gave me contact details of his friend who worked at DuPont.
I called him, unfortunately, he said he never worked with the types of plastic that I want to downcycle. I wrote to the professors that seemed to know about the subject and couldn’t get a reply.
Instead of dropping this idea completely which I think needs to exist in the world, I wanted to share it with the general public, and see if there are other people who would want to tackle this.

Supply
Is there enough plastic? Yes. Sorted and ready to go.

My question to you, are you a chemist? Plastic manufacturer or broker? Can you help?
Please help me understand why this is not being done right now, and tell me how to do it. I will raise money, put together facilities and seriously do something about our collective crime.
Maybe also tell me why this is not a thing? Is it logistics? Is it too expensive? Do you want to do this together? I would love to hear from you. Please reach out to me at dvrmysr at gmail.
If we can start this off, we open-source the design of our facilities, design of our items, open-source everything so this can be replicated anywhere in the world by anyone and can generate income, eliminate the shameful byproduct of 21st century.
Thank you very much for caring,
Devrim

