On average, each individual in the United States discards about 4.9 pounds of municipal solid waste each day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling, the agency's 2018 national accounting and the latest comprehensive estimate it has published for total MSW generation. That waste stream includes a large share of plastic, much of which is not accepted by curbside recycling; sorting systems struggle with mixed resins and contamination, so a significant portion of what goes into the blue bin still ends up in a landfill. It was this exact frustration that pushed a group of Duke University students to ask a simpler question: instead of hoping a plastic container gets recycled the conventional way, could it just be turned directly into a building material?
The team selected plastics #1, #2, #4, and #5 for testing
