Re-Membrane

Purpose and goal

Climate footpring for the construction industry needs to be reduced. Both materials and processes need to be improved. Plastic is a material with important sealing functions in both infrastructure and house building projects, but unfortunately has a large climate footprint. The goal is to enable and increase the use of recycled plastic in construction products and reduce the climate footprint. The goal of the project is to replace virgin plastic with recycled and manufacture different membrane products, verify good quality for a very long time and possibly to be offered on the market.

Expected effects and result

In several project, in collaboration with companies, we have produced demonstration products showing that recycled plastic can be used in high-quality products with a long lifespan. Some examples of products are packaging and automotive parts. We expect that several of the products manufactured in this project will also meet relevant functional and durability tests. If the quality can be guaranteed, the products can be put on the market and since the volumes are large, the effect of switching to recycled material will reduce the climate footprint significantly.

Planned approach and implementation

Within the project, we will partly estimate volumes of installation spillage of some products where we currently do not really know the volumes (geomembrane, tunnel membrane). This will be done through site visits and interviews. A geomembrane recycling trial will be done on a lab scale. The project participants will develop and manufacture building materials (film and foil) in full scale, containing recycled materials. RISE assists with tests to evaluate product quality , durability and a scaled-down LCA analysis to quantify the environmental effects when using recycled material.