Australia’s first RESIN8 facility opens in Victoria; RECo puts the aggregate material to the test
The Reinforced Earth Company has put a new eco-concrete additive to the test as Australia-first RESIN8 recycling facility, which turns plastic and e-waste into building materials, such as precast concrete, masonry bricks, blocks, pavers and asphalt, opens in Victoria.
Supporting CRDC, the firm behind the $2.5 million Tottenham plant that will turn hard-to-recycle items into this new concrete material called RESIN8, RECo with our concrete supplier partner, produced concrete retaining wall panels to showcase and test the RESIN8 material for the plant’s unveiling.
The team utilised a 50MPa concrete mix where 3% of the fine aggregate component was replaced with RESIN8, which equated to 20kg/m3. In addition, 20 cylinders were taken from the concrete mix utilised, which will be crushed to enable a strength profile to be obtained over time.
Lukas Toman, who leads RECo’s testing of RESIN8 in Victoria said: “It’s incredibly exciting that CRDC is now converting difficult to recycle plastic waste into a valuable concrete aggregate replacement for the construction and infrastructure industry here in Australia.
“Increasing the sustainability of our concrete in all our precast solutions is a major focus for RECo; as such we were incredibly excited to support RESIN8’s opening and to continue to test the strength profile of our RESIN8 concrete mix.”
CRDC Australia opened the facility in partnership with the Australia and New Zealand Recycling Platform (ANZRP), backed by a $500,000 State Government investment.
This week’s grand opening, attended by RECo and more than 100 other stakeholders from various sectors including government, non-profits, academia, and industry, underscores the collective commitment towards innovative environmental solutions.
FAQ
RESIN8 is a versatile, high-performance, low-carbon hybrid mineral-polymer engineered for both structural and non-structural building applications. It meets and surpasses international ASTM standards and provides a sustainable alternative to conventional building materials.
Unique to RESIN8 is CRDC’s proprietary, carbon-negative production process, which accepts all types of plastics (resins 1-7)— a significant advancement over traditional recycling methods that typically only handle resins 1 and 2.
The facility will operate with an initial capacity of 1 metric tonne per hour. Its modular production lines allow for rapid scaling to meet the growing demand for sustainable building materials in Australia.
