Thanks to this startup, your next road trip might be on plastic

TechniSoil turned bottles into the first plastic-paved stretch of highway in California.

Now you only have to feel marginally bad about those Fiji water bottles you’ve been chugging.

Thanks to this startup, your next road trip might be on plastic

A startup called TechniSoil is repurposing plastic, turning it into cheaper highway asphalt.

Harder, better, faster, stronger

The company unveiled the first plastic-paved stretch of highway in California, to the tune of ~150k bottles per mile.

That might sound like a lot of bottles. But our Trends team found that the plastic-paving supply is plentiful.

The US generated 35.4m tons of plastic in 2017, according to the American Chemistry Council, and 8.4% of it was recycled.

The new material resists potholes and can last 2-3x longer than standard asphalt.

As Barbie once said, “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.”

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