China built a road in Shanghai from 6,000 milk bottles

More than 6,000 empty milk bottles and other plastic waste have been transformed into asphalt for a road at the Xuhui campus of East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST) in Shanghai. The project was presented on Earth Day and aimed to offer a solution for difficult-to-recycle packaging.

The bottles were processed and incorporated into polymer-modified asphalt, which was used to build the infrastructure. The initiative was developed by dairy company Shiny Meadow, in collaboration with ECUST and Dow, a company that promotes the use of recycled plastic in road construction.

Milk bottles are difficult to recycle because they may retain residue, and some companies consider them worthless waste. Lin Rong, director of Shiny Meadow, said that the project gave the packaging a “circular life” instead of allowing it to end up as trash.

According to Dow, using recycled plastic in asphalt can reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The Shanghai project is part of a campaign launched in Asia in 2017, with similar work in Indonesia, India, and Thailand. The university described the initiative as an example of the unconventional use of waste and hopes it will inspire students to develop new sustainability solutions.