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Upcycling plastic waste into reusable building insulation modules

People Involved

Dr Theo Dounas

Project Description

Each year, 370 million tonnes of plastic waste is produced across the world, causing serious harm to the environment by lasting long in the landfills or find a way to the oceans. This can harm living beings too by entering food chain.

Current plastic recycling technologies are not fully efficient, given the need for sorting a vast array of plastic formations, separation of them, and removing contaminations, sticky labels, glue, foils, etc. For many types of plastic, current approaches to recycling are very energy intensive, or degrade the material over time as such, they cannot be recycled repeatedly.

This widely produced waste deserves further research for an effective reuse in the construction sector, the biggest consumer of raw materials. Plastic has good thermal properties and can be recycled into building insulation products, if studied and optimised for that purpose.

This project will develop innovative building insulation modules and an efficient technical process for upcycling plastic and packaging waste into those modules, suitable for wide use in construction. This is to provide a solution for plastic waste management, reduce environmental pollutions, improve energy efficiency of buildings, and cut the upfront embodied carbon emission of construction.

Status Project Complete
Value £44,000.00
Project Dates Oct 1, 2023 - Mar 31, 2024
Partner Organisations Oban Joinery Services Ltd

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