A Listowel company that helps turn plastic into roads will have a day in the spotlight on a New Discovery Channel show "Made By Destruction."
Series Producer Robin Bicknell says EFS Plastics shreds up old plastic bags which are made into pellets that are mixed with asphalt in a greener roads making process. EFS sends the plastic pellets to GreenMantra Technologies of Brantford.
She says they create a waxy material that allows the asphalt to be turned into roads at a much lower temperatures. She says that means less carbon, which has a big environmental impact considering our many many kilometres of roads. Plus it diverts plastic bags from the landfill.
"The great thing about this series is that it actually follows the journey of some things we just get rid of and shows how they are destroyed, and then reborn into something totally surprising," adds Bicknell.
She feels there's nothing better than watching things get shredded, smashed and shredded. But with a hopeful outcome to help offset the guilt of tossing things away.
Bicknell explains it's essentially chemical engineering of a product back to its origins.
" Whether it be steel or copper or gold or abs plastic, or an organic material like the casein protein in milk," she says. "That's usually what happens, right? You're destroying something down to its very base element and then building it back up into something new."
For example, there's a woman in Germany who makes cocktail dresses out of milk. And a company in Switzerland takes the ashes of cremated human remains and compresses them into diamonds.
She says a Barrie, Ontario Company smashes electronic waste to extract precious metals, circuit boards, and wiring to create things like copper pots, jewelry or trumpets.
The show runs Monday evenings starting at 7pm on July 4.
EFS Plastics Inc. of Listowel is a plastic recycling and reprocessing company that diverts over 10,000 tons per year from landfills
This equals the annual energy consumption of approximately 1,700 four-person households.
