Newsroom archive
L.A.'s Green New Deal and plastic roads
Under its Green New Deal agenda, Los Angeles drew attention for exploring recycled plastic in road paving, one of many experiments in new end markets for recovered material.
Every recycling system eventually runs into the same wall: collected material needs somewhere to go. That is why city experiments matter. When Los Angeles, under its Green New Deal agenda, explored recycled plastic as a component of road paving, it was testing a new demand-side outlet for material the curbside stream already delivers.
Road applications never replaced bottle-to-bottle recycling as the highest use of food-grade PET, but the search for durable end markets they represented remains the right instinct.
The demand side is still the story. Read our analysis of rPET versus virgin PET prices.
From the GHD Americas newsroom archive. Originally shared on January 11, 2021.
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