Evaluation of Use of Plastic Waste in Construction

One of the environmental issues in most regions of Iran is the large number of bottles made from poly-ethylene terephthalate (PET) deposited in domestic wastes and landfills. Due to the high volume of these bottles, more than 1 million m3 landfill spaces are needed for disposal every year. The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the possibility of using PET waste in asphalt concrete mixes as aggregate replacement (Plastiphalt) to reduce the environmental effects of PET disposal. So these plastics will end up as earth fill. In this circumstance instead of recycling it repeatedly, if it is utilized to prepare aggregates for concrete, it will be a boon to the construction industry. Most of the failures in concrete structures occur due to the failure of concrete by crushing of aggregates. Plastic aggregate which have low crushing values will not be crushed as easily as the stone aggregates. These aggregates are also lighter in weight compared to stone aggregates. Since a complete substitution for Conventional Aggregate was not found feasible, a partial substitution with various percentage of plastic aggregate was done. Both volumetric and grade substitution was employed in this investigation.