While polypropylene plastics are commonly found in everyday single use items from takeout food containers to yogurt cups, it is increasingly difficult to find municipalities that accept these items through their recycling programs. Reimagined Recycling, a Pittsburgh based non-profit, has set out to address the issue of these items ending up in landfills through their collection program that transforms the discarded plastics into durable home goods and architectural building materials.
The organization recently acquired a plastic sheet press that enabled them to collect and process more plastics, creating sheets that they could sell as building materials for items such as outdoor furniture. However, they were facing issues related to the quality and durability of the sheets, so they established a partnership with a team of students from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University to address challenges and provide recommendations as part of the senior capstone project.
The students who took on this project, Audrey Lambert, Ellie Lowe, Aleena Siddiqui, and Eliana Szabo, were drawn in by the opportunity to connect their materials science coursework with solving a real-world problem related to plastics recycling.
