The Development of a Concrete Block Containing PET Plastic Bottle Flakes

Plastic waste is increasing continuously, especially in the form of throw away packaging such as drinking water bottles, designed to be convenient, inexpensive, and accessible. Plastic disposal, however, is difficult and has a lower recyclability rate than other types of materials such as glass and paper. This study presents a method of reducing the amount of plastic waste by recycling plastic containers in architectural work. Non-load-bearing concrete blocks for safe and efficient use can be manufactured using plastic flakes as an alternative material aggregate. This study developed such block sand tested them for compressive strength integrating four major factors-(1) the cement to aggregate ratio, (2) the water to cement ratio, (3) the size of plastic flakes used and (4) the proportion of plastic flake that replaced sand. The findings revealed that using a ratio of 1-3 cement to aggregate, where the aggregate mix comprised of 20% small and medium sized (combined at 1-1) plastic flakes plus 80% sand and a water to cement ratio of 0.5, provided the optimal compressive strength to form a concrete block that can be used to construct a non-load bearing wall.