Los Angeles hopes to turn plastic trash into paved roads

摘要

One of the largest cities in the United States is becoming the first metropolitan area to recycle plastic into repaved roads. In Los Angeles, the Bureau of Street Services, or StreetsLA, has tested samples of recycled asphalt mixed with recycled plastic in parking lots and smaller streets. Adel Hagekhalil, StreetsLA's executive director and general manager, said the test results were "very impressive" and his department is planning to try out the plastic-infused asphalt on a major thoroughfare. The pandemic and rain have delayed the project, but StreetsLA has rescheduled the major test for this month or early October, he said."We wanted to do a full-scale application on one of the most heavily traveled, most difficult streets in Los Angeles across from the iconic Disney Hall," Hagekhalil said. The LA project mixing plastic and asphalt is part of an effort, backed by the Department of Energy, to find new ways to deal with a major recycling problem in the United States: In 2017, China banned importation of waste, which led to tons of trash piling up in the United States (Greenwire, Jan. 12, 2018).