Eco-Friendly Alternative to Concrete as a Building Material

Concrete is the most abundantly used material worldwide, with an estimate of 4.4 billion tons being produced in 2021 alone. Although it is reliable as a building material, each ton of concrete produced results in the creation of approximately one ton of CO₂. This combined with the mass amounts of concrete used across the world each year results in the concrete industry being responsible for about 8% of all pollution each year. Considering this, new alternatives to concrete are being developed to attempt to resolve this issue. An experimental program is designed to test one of such materials. A sustainable building materials manufacturing company has explored the creation of an alternative to concrete block material and has supplied samples for the completion of this project. These samples use recycled plastic as a binder for the aggregates rather than the Portland cement used in traditional concrete. The goal of this project is to test the material properties of recycled plastic concrete to determine the stress–strain behavior in both compression and tension. These tests allowed for the determination of the compression and tension modulus to analyze whether the material behaves the same in tension as in compression. Along with this, the material was also tested in compression over a variety of temperatures to assess the impact that changes in temperature have on the strength of the material. Cylinders with a diameter of 100 mm and length of 200 mm were prepped and tested for compressive to determine compression properties, while prisms with a length of approximately 300 mm, and width and depth of approximately 100 mm were tested to determine tensile properties. The results obtained give insight into potential applications of the alternative material, and changes or improvements that could be made to allow for further applications.