{"id":357569,"date":"2026-09-26T13:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T13:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357569\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T13:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T13:14:08","slug":"in-2022-new-york-city-mixed-10395-pounds-of-plastic-waste-into-three-staten-island-road-strips-cutting-carbon-emissions-by-16128-2-pounds-in-the-pilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357569\/","title":{"rendered":"In 2022, New York City mixed 10,395 pounds of plastic waste into three Staten Island road strips, cutting carbon emissions by 16,128.2 pounds in the pilot |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"InAI-generated representative image showing a Staten Island road-paving project using asphalt incorporating recycled plastic waste. Credits – ChatGPT Built nearly entirely from bitumen, a byproduct of crude oil refining, asphalt has changed very little since it initially became the conventional material for paving roads over a hundred years ago. Engineers in several countries have begun asking whether some plastic waste could partially replace the oil-based binder that holds asphalt together. Two mundane streets on Staten Island were transformed into a real-world experiment by New York City in its quest to discover the answer on its own.A silent experiment on 2 Staten Island streetsIn 2022, the New York City Department of Transportation worked with local producer City Asphalt of Staten Island and Scottish company MacRebur, which produces asphalt additives from waste plastic, to pave sections of Rice Avenue and Royal Oak Road. Over the course of the four-day manufacturing, the team applied several test strips with varied percentages of the recycled plastic addition, along with a regular mix as a reference for comparison. The pilot used 10,395 pounds of waste plastic, which is the same weight as more than 214,000 single-use plastic bottles that would have gone to a landfill.The additive was mixed directly into the asphalt at the production plant, substituting for a percentage of the virgin bitumen binder that the mix would typically require. Bitumen is expensive and carbon-intensive to make, so even a small reduction can lower emissions; NYC DOT said the pilot cut carbon dioxide emissions by 16,128.2 pounds versus a comparable stretch of traditional asphalt, a savings accomplished without any special construction equipment or innovative paving processes.City Asphalt currently mixes a high percentage of salvaged asphalt pavement into their everyday mix, so adding a plastic based binder extender was a very modest alteration to fit into existing production. The four test sections were laid one after the other in the same week, each with a different dosage of the plastic ingredient, allowing engineers to assess a number of formulations side-by-side under identical traffic and weather conditions, rather than on the basis of a single sample.Providing the results to independent researchersThe city hired outside engineers to see how the plastic-infused pavement would truly hold up over time, rather than taking the manufacturer’s word for it. Researchers at the Rutgers Centre for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation<\/a> have been monitoring the two roads since the pilot was installed, measuring such factors as cracking, rutting and the surface\u2019s ability to withstand New York\u2019s frigid winters and humid summers. Another less obvious focus from the start has been whether the plastic additive releases microplastics into the environment as the road ages and eventually wears out.That caution reflects a wider debate within the paving industry itself. Waste plastic is not a single uniform material, and different types of recycled plastic can behave in very different ways once blended with hot bitumen, which is part of why the science is still being worked out at a national level. Some formulations improve resistance to cracking and rutting, while others have shown mixed results depending on climate, traffic load and the exact plastic feedstock used, which is why long-term field data from real streets, rather than laboratory samples alone, matters so much to engineers deciding whether to expand the practice.The technology MacRebur tested out on Staten Island has already been used to pave stretches of road in the United Kingdom, Australia and a handful of other countries, giving the researchers an ever-increasing body of real world performance data to compare against New York’s own results. Each new trial adds another data point to a still developing picture of how plastic modified asphalt ages under different climates and traffic patterns, which is exactly the kind of evidence city engineers say they need before recommending the material for wider use.\"asphalt<\/p>\n

AI-generated representative image showing recycled plastic waste being processed into asphalt material for road paving in New York City. Credits – ChatGPT<\/p>\n

A tentative step towards a larger ideaIndustry groups like the National Asphalt Pavement Association have called for a thoughtful, evidence-based approach to recycled plastic in asphalt, noting in a joint review with the Asphalt Institute that the practice looks straightforward on paper but poses real challenges regarding long-term durability, worker safety and consistent performance from various plastic sources. Similarly, NYC DOT has been cautious, calling the Staten Island roads a test project rather than a final answer, and any wider deployment will hinge on how the pavement holds up over the next few years of monitoring.Even couched in the most guarded terms, the research hints at a genuinely valuable application for a type of plastic waste that is notoriously difficult to recycle through traditional channels. Every year New York City lays down more than a million tonnes of asphalt, and a tiny fraction goes into recycled plastic content. If the substance is durable, it could significantly reduce landfill waste and the city\u2019s reliance on fresh bitumen. Every season of monitoring will help determine whether plastic waste has a future in road paving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI-generated representative image showing a Staten Island road-paving project using asphalt incorporating recycled plastic waste. Credits – ChatGPT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[133236,53884,9,24,63,133235,134,136,135,133237],"class_list":["post-357569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-asphalt-pavement","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-recycled-plastic","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-sustainable-roads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}