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Plastic infilled roads seem like false concern where they've been paved with tar (a coal/petroleum product) for decades. And yes, the tar comes off in tiny pieces over time too.

https://ecoshieldasphalt.com/news/environmental-impact-of-co...

Maybe if we'd already shifted to all concrete roads, or every road we're talking about was paved with something else. Or if road diets were happening all over the world.

Most roads use bitumen (a heavy oil fraction) which AFIK less harmful in a long term than BPA containing plastic. Oil contain some harmful for health compounds (in small amounts) but they AFIK degrade in then environment much faster than BPA.

Sort of funny, because I remember in school we were taught "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" but maybe that simply doesn't work as a concept for most modern materials.

Plastic roads aren't recycling, and it's not green - it's toxic waste disposal.

The reason they are getting traction is because at first glance it sounds like a great idea.

Only when you think about the detail that you start to realise that unintended consequences.

The question to really focus on is "why are environmentalists so obsessed with keeping plastic out of landfill?". Environmentalists will go to almost any length to keep plastic out of landfill. But WHY? The safest place for plastic waste is in landfill, not out in the environment distributed everywhere as microplastics.

In Australia there's a ridiculous utter obsession with "recycling plastic", as though it is some sort of solution to the plastic problem. Recycling plastic is not a solution because the flow of plastic is so utterly gargantuan that no amount of recycling can get on top of it. And that is when governments that are under pressure to do something about it turn to plastic roads. "What are we going to do with this firehose of waste plastic? Well we CANNOT put it in landfill because landfill is the worst thing in the world, so we must put it in roads."

The trick was that "recycle" was always a lie when it came to plastic. Paper can be recycled, but it's not super efficient. Metal can be recycled profitably. Glass can be recycled or even just reused. But plastic? It's stupid-expensive to recycle and degrades too much to be endlessly reusable.

Imho all single-use plastic (and similar non-recyclable non-biodegradable products like non-recyclable coated paper products) should be taxed by mass. Get rid of the stupid "plastic straw ban" and "plastic bag ban" piecemeal garbage that punishes consumers while ignoring commercial users and hit everybody equally.

It's impossible to buy food and beverages packaged in anything but single-use plastics. You'd think someone would have built a commercial alternative.

I was taught the same slogan in school as well. The 3 R’s we called it! I think where we went wrong is we started ignoring the first two and went all in on the third.

I remember at one point we saw a demo of an alternative 2 litre pop (soda) bottle that used slightly thicker plastic which made it durable enough to be collected, washed, and refilled. It never came to market here, unfortunately. I guess no one was willing to put in the infrastructure.

> I guess no one was willing to put in the infrastructure.

This is kind of surprising. I remember when I was a kid (not that many decades ago), things like milk, soda, yogurt etc. would come in glass or ceramic bottles under a subscription service. [For context this wasn't in the US]

Every time the delivery day came, you would set out (sometimes a crate of) empty bottles that were then exchanged for the same amount of filled bottles. They'd then wash and sterilize the old bottles centrally and refill and recap for a future delivery.

Thing is, I don't recall buying drinks this way being more expensive per-bottle than what it costs today. Perhaps slightly more inconvenient since you had to remember to set out the old bottles, but it's not like people don't do that anyways today with their recycling...

I live in Germany and I just buy milk, soda, water and yogurt in glass bottles from my local supermarket. All are from companies less than 50 kilometers away and will be washed and reused several times.

So there are places in the world, where this is still possible, although there no longer is a delivery service. But it's more expensive than plastic bottles and even more expensive than single-use plastic, so the majority uses plastic alternatives. Most milk here comes in some kind of cardboard containers that are mixed with a lot of plastic.

That's why I'm curious...

I feel like people figured out how to do this in the past in a cost effective way (even including delivery!) but then we somehow moved away to something (arguably) worse.

My hypothesis here would be perhaps the increasing abundance of choice makes it inefficient, since the main drawback I recall was that there was just like 1-2 local providers that handled each type of thing rather than like the 4 brands of milk we get at supermarkets today [in the US]. Though, I can't see why modern supply chains couldn't be refitted to handle this? E.g. your package delivery person / mailman also recovers the reusable containers etc.

>some kind of cardboard containers >that are mixed with a lot of plastic.

Tetrapak?

I've heard that tetrapak are like the worst type of material to recycle.

IIRC they're a combo of paper, aluminum foil, and a plastic inner coating. Individually, the paper and aluminum are relatively easily recyclable, but I recall seeing somewhere that because it's all bound into a single material, the labor/energy cost to separate the layers of tetrapak for recycling end up not worth it and it just ends up in landfills...

Yeah. Also Tetrapak (the company) is lying about the recycling ratio in order to avoid collecting "Pfand" for beverages. If the recycling ratio for a bottle/can/container is less than 70 percent in order to increase the number of container that make it back to the reseller. That's why there's no Pfand for milk in Tetrapaks, but you need to pay Pfand for milk in glass bottles.

Yes, Tetrapak.

Go to somewhere like Germany. You pay a "Pfand" when you buy the plastic bottle and it's noticeably sturdier than in countries without this system. There are machines everywhere (especially in supermarkets) that you can put the bottles into. The machine collects them for cleaning and refilling and you get your Pfand back.

The infrastructure isn't crazy and it's working nicely in plenty of countries.

But there's also the so-called "Einweg-Pfand" for single-use bottles. The reverse venting machines will also take those back but immediately cut them down into small pieces.

Supermarket chains lure you into believing that all of the plastic from those bottles will be reused to create new ones.

That's a great system. We call it a "deposit" and but we only use it for beer here. For a long time, beer was only sold at specific beer stores so it was natural for people to return their empty bottles and cans to the store for the deposit.

The first two are bad for business unfortunately. They're a tough sell in practice even though they are more important.

this is my first time hearing about plastic roads and it sounds like satire.

Well asphalt is made in part from oil, so it's just another form of that.

what’s your point? all kinds of shit is derived from oil

I think the point is plastic roads and asphalt roads are just sibling forms of oil

countless modern substances and materials are siblings if you look at it this way. you sleep on polyester mattress, why not sleep on asphalt? etc

The point is that it's not far-fetched that they're making roads out of plastic. It's a viable material for cars to drive on, which is the purpose of building of roads.

Or a new verse to Fake Plastic Trees.