Case Study: Polyrok contains 95% REDcycle plastics.
Case Study: Polyrok contains 95% REDcycle plastics.
In November 2020 Coles Horsham in regional Victoria installed the first commercial Polyrok kerb and footpath in Australia. The Polyrok used in this concrete contained around 900,000 pieces of REDcycle plastic.
Polyrok was developed by Replas, which has been a manufacturing partner of the REDcycle program since it started ten years ago. Replas has previously been using REDcycle plastic in outdoor furniture and park infrastructure like bollards and wheel stops. However, Polyrok has greatly increased the amount of plastic used by Replas because it contains about 95% REDcycle plastics.
Polyrok is a cost-effective and scalable solution to dealing with the most problematic soft plastic waste: post-consumer soft plastic packaging collected by REDcycle. The Polyrok product is a recycled plastic aggregate that has many applications, the most common being as a replacement to mineral aggregate in concrete. With this application, concrete becomes lighter, easier to work with, more thermally efficient and durable.
Extensive testing has demonstrated the plastic is firmly bound and does not release microplastics into the environment.
Since the first pour in late 2020, Coles has used Polyrok in other concrete pours. At Cobblebank, in Victoria, 6.5 million pieces of plastic were used.
Polyrok has been used by councils in Victoria, South Australia and NSW and a council in North Queensland is about to take delivery of their first batch.
One of the more recent installations has been a path installed by Blackown City Council, in NSW, which used over 3 million pieces of REDcycle plastic, which is almost half the plastic collected in Coles and Woolworth in that LGA.
But for us, one of the most exciting concrete pours was that done by a couple in Frankston in Victoria, who decided to use Polyrok in the new driveway at their home.
For more videos on Polyrok visit the Replas YouTube page.