MacRebur sells a plastic scrap-to-roads pathway

Toby McCartney, CEO of United Kingdom-based MacRebur, says he sees the potential for his company—which converts plastics scrap into asphalt paving binders—to tie into the proposed $1 trillion of infrastructure spending being discussed in Washington.

“The proposed investment of almost $1 trillion in infrastructure construction is absolutely fantastic news,” says McCartney. “What’s particularly exciting is the sustainable aspect of this anticipated funding plan, with the incorporation of electric vehicle charging stations receiving a portion of the infrastructure investment fund and the broader economic agenda specifically looking at clean energy and ‘high-growth industries of the future.”

MacRebur has been working with transportation sector and economic development officials in Florida to lobby for is plastic scrap-content binder materials since at least 2019, and the firm says it is “set to open its first United States factory in Florida later this year.”

Adds McCartney, “MacRebur is ideally positioned to support this plan. Our technology processes waste plastics destined for landfill or incineration and adds them into asphalt for road construction. It’s the perfect green solution, and I’m hopeful that this is just the start for the U.S.’ big – and sustainable - infrastructure plans under President Biden.”

MacRebur says its products can be made with discarded plastic packaging that is infrequently recycled, and that “roads across the country could provide a resolution to the problem, utilizing the [scrap] plastic whilst helping to foster a circular economy.”

Continues McCartney, “With each mile of road laid using our MacRebur product, we use up the equivalent weight of 1,194,421 one-time-use plastic bags. Or, put another way, 1 ton of MacRebur mix contains the equivalent of 80,000 plastic bottles.”

In his pitch to state and federal road builders and policymakers, McCartney concludes, “The U.S. has around 4,071,000 miles of roads, so as we see it, MacRebur products could be the single biggest solution to the U.S. plastics problem.”