A company has figured out what to do with the plastic, foam and assorted junk that nobody else wants – shred it up and pave roads with it.
The firm’s patented product, Waste Light Concrete (WLC), swaps out the stone aggregate in traditional concrete for shredded non-recyclable waste. That includes polystyrene foam, mixed-ester plastics, rigid plastics, furnace ash, sawdust and even cigarette butts – materials that would typically be heading straight for a landfill or an incinerator.
According to Makropa, a single kilometer of road built with WLC can lock away between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of waste. The company estimates that 30% to 40% of all solid waste falls into the “hard to handle” category that its product targets.
Károly Bus, Makropa’s founder and the patent holder behind WLC, has been developing the technology for years. He calls the shredded waste material the “gravel of the future.”
“Usually these plastics end up in the incinerator or landfill. I don’t know of anyone else utilizing it the way that we are,” Bus told Reuters. “Obviously there have been various attempts to use these types of waste but so far nobody has found a solution in such scale and quantity.”
For Bus, the motivation is clear-cut. “The incinerator and the landfill are the worst solutions,” he said. “There are only better solutions than those if anyone can utilize them.”
The concept of mixing plastic into road-building materials is not entirely new – so-called “plastic roads” have been trialled in various countries. But those approaches typically involve melting small amounts of plastic into hot asphalt. Makropa’s method is different. The waste replaces the stones in a concrete mix rather than being melted into a binder, which means WLC retains the chemistry of concrete. That makes it more durable, longer-lasting and more versatile than asphalt-based alternatives, according to the company.
WLC has been commercially available since 2021 and uses a proprietary powdered additive alongside standard mixing equipment. The shredded waste components take the place of the stones that would normally go into a concrete mix, while the binding additive and cementitious ingredients hold everything together.
Beyond road paving, the material has already been used in building foundations. Testing has shown it offers stronger resistance to projectiles and better soundproofing than conventional concrete. Makropa also says WLC can be broken up, re-shredded and reused at the end of its life – a feature that gives the material a second act even after it has served its initial purpose.
Makropa, which was founded in 2002, remains a small operation of just four people based in Budapest. But the ambition behind WLC is anything but small – Bus and his co-founder Krisztian Mehes are pursuing international interest in a technology that could give cities around the world a new way to deal with waste that currently has nowhere to go.
