The project POLYMIX, in which you have participated AIMPLAS, Technological Institute of Plastic, and which has been coordinated by the University of Cantabria, has received, within the framework of Green Week in Brussels, the citizens' award for the best project LIFE 2015 in the Environment category.
The LIFE Citizens' Award recognizes this project, financed with European funds through the Life + program, which has managed to obtain innovative asphalt mixtures that are more resistant and sustainable than conventional ones thanks to the incorporation of plastic waste in its manufacture. These are four different types of asphalt, to whose composition end-of-life tires (NFU), polypropylene caps, polyethylene containers and polystyrene hangers have been added respectively. With the new mixes, a total of two kilometers of a section of the M-300 was paved at the accesses to Alcalá de Henares.
After studying the behavior of the asphalt road section, the POLYMIX project partners have come to the conclusion that the new asphalt mixtures not only meet the requirements to be used in road construction, but also obtain a notable improvement in the resistance to plastic deformations compared to conventional asphalt mix. Thus, with their use the volume of raw material used in their manufacture is reduced and at the same time the cost of maintaining them is reduced by having a longer useful life.
For the second consecutive year, the public has had the opportunity to vote for what in their opinion was the best LIFE project of 2015 from a list of 24 projects selected by experts in the Environment according to rigorous criteria and among which was also listed as candidate BREAD4PLA, another project in which AIMPLAS has participated. The award that has gone to POLYMIX, was collected yesterday by Professor Daniel Castro, coordinator of the project at the University of Cantabria and technical director of GITECO, in a ceremony held yesterday at The Egg Conference Center in Brussels. In this event, five awards were also given to the Best of the Best LIFE projects in the Nature category, an award to the Best of the Best in the Information and Communication category, and five awards to the Best of the Best LIFE projects in the Environment category. As a novelty, all of them were released live at the gala itself.
