“This picture was taken in June 2024 in Tandil, Argentina. My company — Gregui Pisos y Revestimientos — buys hard plastic known as ABS, short for acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, recovered by the city’s recycling centres from old microwaves, computers, washing machines and other appliances. ABS is rarely recycled in Argentina and often goes to waste. In the photo, I’m checking out a printer that is about to be disassembled for recycling.
We grind up the hard plastic and incorporate it into concrete to make a material we’ve named PlastiHormigón (or PlastiConcrete). This is made into building components such as slabs and sleepers, as well as other products for flooring and walls.
I’ve been working in the construction-materials industry since 2015, but I wanted to create a product that would be innovative and ecological. I reached out to the physics department at the local university in Tandil, known as UNICEN, to do tests with wasted materials. We started by testing concrete combined with styrofoam, which is also difficult to recycle, but that didn’t work.
