【英翻】可回收塑料废弃物可以用来修路

A few years ago, engineer Toby McCartney was working in southern India with a charity that aided pickers who worked at landfill sites harvesting reusable items and selling them. McCartney discovered that plastic waste they retrieved was being put into potholes in roads, doused with gasoline, and set afire. When the plastic melted into the holes and then hardened, it filled them.

几年前，工程师托比.迈克卡尔特内在印度南部工作，义务帮助那些在垃圾填筑地工作的挖掘工人，他们得到了大量的可利用的物品，并且卖掉了它们。迈克卡尔特内发现这些取回的废弃物被填到路上的一些坑里。泼洒上汽油，然后引火点燃。塑料融入坑里并且变硬后填充满了整个坑穴。

When McCartney returned to Scotland, he told two of his friends about what he had seen. As MacRebur co-founder and chief operating officer Gordon Reid recalls, they decided that it would work better to use plasticwaste to create a new type of material specifically designed for use in roads. After a year of research, they developed a method for transforming a mix of industrial and consumer plastic waste into pellets of a new material that could replace bitumen, the oil-based sealing material that holds asphalt together in roads.

当迈克卡尔特内回到苏格兰的时候，他告诉两个朋友关于他所看到的一切。正如“马克.瑞伯”公司的共同创立者和首席运营官戈登.雷德呼吁的那样，他们已经决定用塑料废弃物来制造出一种新型的材料专门用于道路建设。在进行了一年的研究后，他们找到了一种方法来把工业和日常利用过的塑料垃圾的混合物转化为一种新材料的方法，这种新材料能够代替沥青，这种油基的的密封材料能够把沥青粘合到一起，运用到道路建设上。

Since MacRebur started operations in April 2016, the company's recycled plastic road-building material has been used to build roadways in places rangi***************ia to Dubai, according to the Daily Record, a Scottish newspaper.

根据苏格兰报纸“Daily Record”的报道，自从“马克.瑞伯”公司在2016年4月开始这个项目以来，公司的可再生塑料道路建设材料已经被用在了澳大利亚和迪拜的车道上。

"We've got roads on every continent," Reid notes. "And we've had interest from round about 50 countries in the world. The company currently is having discussions with a university in California about building a test road to demonstrate that its plastics are compatible with standards in the U.S.," he says.

雷德说：“我们已经在所有的大洲上都用取得了建设这种道路的资格。我们已经打算在世界上的50来个国家使用这种材料建设道路。公司现在和加利福尼亚大学进行磋商，打算建造一条测试道路，来证明塑料和美国的标准是相匹配的。”

The Plastic and Bitumen Mixture

塑料和沥青混合

According to Reid, using recycled plastic for road building sounds simple, but it actually requires a complex process to create the right material. "Different plastics do different things to bitumen," he explains. "If you use the wrong mix, it actually can make the bitumen more brittle."

根据雷德的说法，使用可再生塑料用于道路建设听上去是一件简单的事情，但是实际上这需要复杂的工序来制造这种材料。“不同的塑料对沥青产生的作用是不同的。”他解释到：“如果你的混合方法错了，你可能会让沥青易碎而不堪使用。”

MacRebur avoids using PET bottles and other types of plastic that are easily recycled, and instead concentrates on types of waste plastic that might otherwise end up buried in the ground. Reid declined to go into too much detail, so as not to reveal too much about MacRebur's proprietary process.

“马克.瑞伯”公司避免使用聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯的瓶子和其它各种容易回收利用的塑料，而致力于使用那些本该被填埋掉的塑料废弃物。雷德拒绝透露更多的细节，如果讲得太多会透露太多“马克.瑞伯”公司的知识产权内容。

In addition to keeping plastic out of landfills, the company's plastic road materials can save about 1 ton (.907 metric tons) in carbon dioxide output for each ton of bitumen that the plastic replaces, according to this fact sheetfrom MacRebur's website.

此外，使用从垃圾填筑地挖出的塑料，公司的制造出的塑料道路材料每代替一吨的沥青就可以减少1吨（907公吨）的二氧化碳排放，这在“马克.瑞伯”公司网站上的情况说明书里有所说明。

MacRebur laying a road in Bahrain.
MACREBUR

“马克.瑞伯”公司在巴林铺设道路

The company has developed different types of road-building plastic for different environments. One variety is designed for roads in places such as the Middle East, where more tensile strength is needed to resist asphalt's tendency to deform from heat. Another is designed to be more flexible, and resist the freeze-thaw cycle in colder places such as Canada or Scotland, Reid says.

公司制造出了不同种类的道路建设塑料以适应不同的环境。其中一种是为像中东这样的地方的道路设计的，在那里可伸展的强度是必要的，这能够让沥青能够避免因为受热变形。另一种被设计得更加柔韧，为了抵御加拿大或者苏格兰这样的较为寒冷的地方产生的冻融现象的影响

MacRebur's current products are capable of replacing between six and 20 percent of the bitumen in roads, but Reid is hopeful that within two years, improved versions will replace as much as 50 percent.

“马克.瑞伯”公司目前的产品能够代替掉道路上6%到20%的沥青，但是雷德希望在2年内，改进版的材料能够代替掉50%的沥青。

Reid says that MacRebur's plastic road materials physically bind with the bitumen, which prevents it from breaking loose and getting into the environment. "The plastic melts into the bitumen and it becomes the same, since they're both hydrocarbons," he explains.

雷德说：“马克.瑞伯”公司的塑料道路材料在物理上和沥青相结合，这能够防止地面材料松掉，可以很好地适应当地的环境。“塑料融化进沥青里，成为了和沥青一样的成分，他们都是碳氢化合物。”他解释到。

Plastic Pins

塑料别针

In the U.S., plastic already is being used in road maintenance. University of Texas at Arlington civil engineering professor Sahadat Hossain, director of the school's Solid Waste Institute for Sustainability, has turned to recycled plastic as a way to solve the problem of unstable soil on highway slopes, which eventually can cause the road surface to fail as well. He's developed a technology for taking plastic from landfills and then recycling it to manufacture giant pins that are inserted in the failing soil to stabilize it.

在美国，塑料已经被用在了道路维护上。德克萨斯大学阿灵顿分校土木工程教授萨哈达特.侯赛因同时也是学校的“固体废弃物可再生研究研究所”的负责人，他已经用可再生塑料解决高速公路斜坡的土地不稳定的问题，这种不稳定会让路面塌陷。他研发了一项技术，从垃圾填筑地挖出废弃塑料，然后回收再利用它们，来制造巨大的别针来固定不稳定的地面。

The recycled plastic pin "has been successfully tested as a laterally loaded pile in different highway slope stabilization projects in the state of Texas, Iowa and Missouri," Hossain explains in an email. "The Texas Department of Transportation has adopted the recycled plastic pin as one of their approved slope stabilization methods." It takes just three to four minutes to install each of the pins in the ground, so an entire unstable area can be shored up in a few days, he says.

这种可再生塑料别针已经成功地经受了测试的考验，已经被用在了德克萨斯州和密苏里州的各种不同的公路斜坡稳定工程上。侯赛因在一封电子邮件中说：“德克萨斯交通部已经采纳了这种可再生塑料别针作为他们批准通过的稳定斜坡的方法。”只需花费3到4分钟就可以把这些别针装入地面，这样在短短的几天内整个不稳定的地面都会被支撑起来。

"Once [the pin] is installed into the ground, it is less susceptible to degradation, which makes it a long-lasting solution for slope repair," Hossain says.

侯赛因说：“（别针）一旦装入了地面，就不容易毁坏了，它能够在斜坡修复过程中表现出很强的坚固性。”

According to Hossain's UTA web page, each recycled pin utilizes about 500 plastic soda bottles. At one of the demonstration sites, Hossain's research group put 600 plastic pins into the ground, making use of 300,000 plastic bottles that otherwise would have ended up in landfills.

根据侯赛因UTA网页的描述，每个可再生别针使用大约500个塑料汽水瓶。在其中一个施工用地上，侯赛因的研究团队用了600个塑料别针买入地面，使用了30万个本该被填埋的塑料瓶。

Hossain thinks that the Chinese government's recent decision to ba***************astic waste for recycling could create an opportunity for U.S. entrepreneurs to make road materials. China imported 776,000 metric tons of waste plastic from the U.S. in 2016, according to Chemical and Engineering News.

侯赛因认为中国政府最新的禁止进口可再生塑料垃圾的决定对于美国企业家来说是一个机遇，这些垃圾可以用作道路建设材料。根据“化学和工程新闻”的报道，中国在2016年从美国进口了77万6钱公吨的塑料垃圾。

"I am positive more and more roads will be constructed using recycled plastics," Hossain says.

侯赛因说：“我对越来越多的道路使用塑料进行铺设报以乐观积极的展望。”

But more work needs to be done to develop *****************uding full-scale testing and life-cycle analyses of roads containing plastic materials, he says.

但是有更多的工作需要去做，以便研究出新方法，还有进行全面的测试和使用塑料材料的道路的使用寿命分析。

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