Innovation September-October 2023

FINDING A NEW TASK FOR TRASH Instead of plastic bottles piling up in landfills, they could be used to fortify landfills to prevent harmful pollutants from seeping out. Those unrecycled bottles could also create roads and buildings. A professor at UBCO explains how. S ome of the millions of tonnes of unrecycled plastic that end up in landfills could instead be used to improve and stabilize those landfills. Researchers at UBCO are finding ways to manage and reuse polyethylene terephthalate (PET or microplastic) by breaking it down and integrating it into clay and soil for geotechnical construction. The result is a product that can be used in construction as well as landfill management. Using this technique, a water-resistant layer can be created in landfills to stabilize the soil barriers and to cover waste. “We wanted to minimize plastic waste in landfills and increase the performance of landfill liners,” says UBCO associate professor, engineering, Dr. Sumi Siddiqua, P.Eng. “The stability of landfill liners is vital for long-term safety. People are concerned with microplastics getting into the food chain and getting into the ground-water system.” Siddiqua has become one of the leading researchers in solid waste valorization, including carbon capture use and sequestration in building materials and landfill barriers for containing CO 2 . DAVID WYLIE

Dr. Siddiqua, left, supervises PhD student Shayan Narani in the Advanced Geomaterial Research Lab at UBCO as they look at ways to re-use discarded plastics. P hoto : S am C harles , UBCO S chool of E ngineering

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