BACK
This post may refer to COVID-19

This post may refer to COVID-19

To access official information about the coronavirus, access CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We Use 6 Billion Face Masks a Day—But Scientists Have a Genius Way to Turn Them Into Roads
www.goodnewsnetwork.org

We Use 6 Billion Face Masks a Day—But Scientists Have a Genius Way to Turn Them Into Roads

Melbourne scientists have shown that adding shredded face masks to road pavement reduces cost, waste, and increases strength and flexibility

Culture & Entertainment

A team of researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have discovered that adding millions of discarded face masks to road-paving mixtures lowered the environmental impact of the masks, and the cost of the road.

Just one kilometer of road would need three million masks, and the polypropylene plastic used to make single-use surgical face masks actually increased the flexibility and durability of the road.

Almost immediately, the idea of seven billion people going through a few masks a week as the pandemic got rolling started ringing alarm bells, and most people at this point will have noticed the dearth of discarded masks on roadsides and in garbage cans.

Click to continue reading

“If historical data is a reliable indicator, it can be expected that around 75 percent of the used masks, as well as other pandemic-related waste, will end up in landfills, or floating in the seas,” writes a July report from the United Nations.

RMIT University scientists published a paper in the journal Science of the Total Environment positing a quite brilliant solution to the mask problem.

Jie Li and the team developed a new composite road-building material that is a mixture of about 2% shredded masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material derived from waste concrete and other minerals from demolished buildings.

This ultra-recycled material was found in the study to be ideal for two of the four layers generally used to create roadways. Furthermore, paving merely a kilometer of two-way road with the RCA would require three million face masks, resulting in a rerouting of 93 tons of waste from landfills.

Plastic roads

The roads actually gained greater flexibility as well, since the polypropylene helped reinforce the bindings of rubble particles, as well as giving a bit of stretch to the particle aggregates.