Exploring the Uncharted Potential of Plastic

October 8, 2021

Author Ray Long

There are certain misconceptions about plastic. Not all of it ends up in the ocean or in landfill. Plastics cannot only be used for packaging, and manufacturing isn’t a waste of natural resources. There’s a school of thought that as a material it is cheap, unsightly and tacky but as a construction material, its durability cannot be questioned. It’s hard wearing, robust and it’s staying around a lot longer than you and me. Maybe the question should be, how can this waste material be used productively to help stop pollution?

You’ll have seen waste plastic used in many different applications. Very recently, we were pleased to supply our recycled plastic gravel grids to a number of exciting projects. These projects have included community and commercial car parks, gravelled social areas, pathways at event venues/stately homes and for housing static caravans.

Chacewater School Truro Cornwall

In May, we were delighted to supply over 400sqm of our gravel grids to a Chacewater Primary School in Truro, Cornwall.

“We were able to secure the grant to build a community garden behind the school in our village. We decided as a council to piggy back the creation of a car park to create access to the garden and greatly improve the safety for children attending the school, utilising the skills of the earth moving contractor as he created the garden to help us get a good value option on the car park.” said Peter Chesworth from Chacewater.

For Peter, the benefits of using our grids were clear. They provided an economical, easy-to-assemble solution that instantly solved all accessibility issues to create a tidy and safe surface for all members of the community and users of the new school car park and gardens.

“We finally have finished and now that the children have returned to school, we are hoping to arrange a drop off area so that mothers don't have to waste too much of their time. The car park had its first trial as there was a large wedding at the church just up the hill. Needless to say, we are quite pleased with our efforts.”

These commercial/community projects clearly show how using recycled plastic building materials such as ours can indeed be incredibly environmentally friendly. This demonstrates its real value and dispels certain myths, not just the ones mentioned above, but that plastics cannot be used in construction. Quite clearly they can and, as the leading UK distributor, we hope to firmly establish the use of recycled plastics within commercial settings. Our target this year was to turn 1,000,000kg of waste into usable building materials and thanks to our wonderful customers, we hit that target a month earlier than planned!

Our sales team are extremely knowledgeable and are able to answer all your enquiries. We also like to listen to new ideas from innovators about how recyclable plastics can be used in everyday life. Plastics are here to stay and we’ll find ways to explore its uncharted potential and remarkable value.