> if you just compress the plastic into a block and lay it down to make a path then as it deteriorates surly you are just contaminating your environment with mico-plastic particles

The article says that the plastic is mixed with sand, heated, and then compressed into bricks. Given this, is your comment still valid? Honest question, I'm not a material science person.

Someone mentioned that the pavers are made from plastic bottles that already deteriorate and shed microplastics into the environment. At least in dense brick form the surface area is dramatically reduced and the deterioration rate slowed.

Yes, the plastic in this case acts as a binder, in fact it would potentially be worse since the heating likely evaporated or decomposed most of the plasticizer which would make the plastic more brittle and more likely to wear off into micro plastics.

Ssssh...

People prefer to distribute their problem into invisible pieces put into the environment slowly over 1000 years than to just bite the bullet and incinerate plastics that have reached their usable lifespan...

There are real reasons to not want microplastics in your local environment, but I think your dismissiveness of spreading a problem out over 1,000 years is unwarranted. There is a huge difference between a problem that has to be solved in a year and a problem that has to be solved in 100 or 1,000 years, because time is an incredibly valuable asset.

Delaying some of the carbon we put in the atmosphere for hundreds of years is massively useful, because it buys us time to try stave off and ameliorate some of the effects of climate change.

Fair but you can also simply bury the compressed bricks yeah? Recycling plastic has always been a ploy by the oil industry to increase consumption and make people feel good about the product.

Burying the compressed bricks is actually a great way to handle sequestration.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

This isn't a ploy, it's a feel good puff piece about someone finding a use for the wasted they're swimming in.

A plastic paver walk way is nicer than a muddy path littered with plastic refuse.

I didn't suggest this was a ploy, I'm confident that the person in question has only the best intentions. I don't think it's unfair to step back and ask what the right approach is, intentions aren't always enough.

For instance, the issue with flammability/melting and also microplastics contamination is real and worth asking. I wonder if using these bricks as building foundations or something might not be a good way of solving both problems at once. However, that's an idea that would only arise if we ask pressing questions in the first place.

It's not the ideal building material and it's a plentiful resource that would otherwise end up ideally in a landfill but likely along the side of the road.

From their perspective it is a good use of something that might otherwise be litter.

well, that pretty much describes a landfill.

I've always wondered if they couldn't compress it, like those bricks but cubes, then use those cubes mixed with base fill dirt for building bridges and such. Like the massive earthworks they build around highways and such.

Sure, the climate change problem is eased. Microplastics in the environment though are a totally different problem & having it slowly accumulate over thousands of years is actually worse because it's a tragedy of the commons scenario. Cleaning this up in 100 years is going to be far more expensive than forcing companies to deal with the trash properly now. Moreover, it's not the companies that end up paying for such a problem but the rest of us because they've externalized the problem (see all the superfund sites in the USA that are chronically underfunded).

In 100 years this will be the least of our problem. Either because it will be trivial to solve by then, or because we will be extinct or perhaps involuntarily returned to a pre-industrial life.

Why would we be extinct? This ridiculous eschatology doesn't belong here.

It's not at all ridiculous if you pay closer attention to various historical events. Maybe the biggest shock in this regard would be the Cuban Missile Crisis. We generally remember just a tense moment followed by the installation of red phones, but a even cursory look at the detailed timeline of events and the sheer number of near misses and gross errors is enough to make the hairs stand up on your neck and question your inductive reasoning.

Now with the unknown prospect of increased weapons development over a century, it gets even less ridiculous. Imagine the international quagmire where something worse than nukes exists, but with a much easier manufacturing process.

In any case, my exact argument isn't that extinction is the most likely scenario. Just that the least likely is one where we are just chugging along with the same overall technological capabilities. Worrying about what will happen to micro-plastics in a hundred years is like a New Yorker worrying about the growing quantity of horse manure in the city circa 1894.

well, imagine living in 1850 and someone telling you that 100 years in the future, ancient organic goop will allow millions of metal devices to tirelessly labor on behalf of their owners, some of these machines fly across oceans, and some can drop explosives that can annihilate entire cities

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea was written in 1870 and features a nuclear submarine (kind of).

Individual micro plastics don’t last that long. The vast surface area to volume ratio speeds up how quickly even durable plastics break down.

Well, unless you start inhaling the plastic dust from plastic road.

I am pretty sure that, even if not "forever chemical", the plastic dust will outlive your lungs.

'The best solution to pollution is dilution'

Why do you advocate for CO2 pollution? Capturing that CO2 suffers from the exact same problem. You either pump it into sealed caverns and hope they don't leak or somehow extract the carbon and turn it into a solid. In the end you are "landfilling" the CO2 instead. Why not skip the middle man and just bury it directly?

The microplastics which we don't see always comes to my mind when I see plastic reused in ways such as this.

Though it probably does depend on the type of plastic, but I'm no chemist.

This is plastic that would go to landfill. Expect it to contain just about everything.

I don't expect this to be heavily processed. More like melted together with some additions.

Microplastics is a huge problem, BUT I can't imagine this being worse than things like tiers and shoe soles.

The alternative is to throw all of this plastic into a landfill where it will… leach into the soil and contaminate the environment with plastic particles. At least this option stabilizes the plastic for a period of time.

Ironically most proper landfills (at least in the first world) use plastic liners along with clay as part of their barriers to prevent water contamination from other trash. I am no expert - so I cannot say if the barriers put plastic in the groundwater but that method prevents more acute toxins like dioxins and oil from getting in.

I would have thought dumping the plastic in a deep pit, perhaps with some kind of solid lining would slow/prevent the plastics breaking down into "micro particles" (whatever they are) and ending up in our food.