Assessment of the idea of using various types of plastic waste in concrete production: engineering properties

Nowadays, based on the rapid growth of population, urbanization and industrialization of cities, the huge amounts of solid waste are generated daily in developing countries, which management of these wastes has become a serious challenge for environmentalists and municipal officials. A considerable proportion of the solid waste is related to the plastic waste, which just a little portion of them will be recycled. One of the alternative ways for recycling plastic wastes is to use these wastes in the concrete productions. So, assessing the engineering properties of this kind of concrete for using in different civil targets is essential. For this purpose in the current paper, attempt has been made to study the effects of adding various types of plastic waste on the fresh and hardened properties of concrete by evaluating the results of experimental data. Although results show that the addition of plastic waste particles in the concrete mixture leads to the decrease of mechanical properties, but this composite concrete can be used in the several structural and non-structural applications and also considered as a practical idea to entrepreneurship.