{"id":21554,"date":"2026-04-21T21:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/21\/the-new-word-in-home-construction-could-be-plastics\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T21:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:16:13","slug":"the-new-word-in-home-construction-could-be-plastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/21\/the-new-word-in-home-construction-could-be-plastics\/","title":{"rendered":"The new word in home construction could be \u201cplastics\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Single-use plastics are a persistent source of environmental pollution, and the need to house a growing global population puts increasing pressure on resources such as timber. MIT engineers have an idea that could make a dent in both problems at once.<\/p>\n

In a recent study, a team led by mechanical engineering professor David Hardt, SM \u201974, PhD \u201979, and lecturer and research scientist AJ Perez \u201913, MEng \u201914, PhD \u201923, laid out a plan for using recycled plastic to 3D-print construction-grade beams, trusses, and other structures that could one day offer lighter, more sustainable alternatives to traditional wood-based framing. Although some companies are working on using large-scale additive manufacturing to create walls, they\u2019re mainly using concrete or clay, whose production typically has a large negative environmental impact. These engineers are among the first to explore printing structural framing elements\u2014and to do so using recycled plastic.<\/p>\n

The design they came up with is similar in shape to the traditional wooden trusses that support flooring, with beams that connect in a pattern resembling a ladder with diagonal rungs. To test it, they obtained pellets made of recycled PET polymers and glass fibers from an aerospace materials company and fed them into a room-size 3D printer as \u201cink.\u201d When they printed four long trusses with this material and configured them into a conventional plywood-topped floor frame, the result had a load-bearing capacity of over 4,000 pounds, far exceeding key building standards set by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n

The plastic-printed trusses weigh about 13 pounds each, light enough to transport without a flatbed truck. An industrial printer can crank one out in under 13 minutes. Crucially, the researchers are developing the process to work with \u201cdirty\u201d plastic that hasn\u2019t been cleaned or preprocessed. In addition to floor trusses, they are working on printing other elements and combining them into a full frame for a modest-size house.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve estimated that the\u00a0world needs about 1 billion new homes by 2050. If we try to make that many homes using wood, we would need to clear-cut the equivalent of the Amazon rainforest three times over,\u201d says Perez. \u201cThe key here is: We recycle dirty plastic into building products for homes that are lighter, more durable, and sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers envision that one day, trash like used bottles and food containers could be sent directly into a shredder, turned into pellets, and fed into a large-scale additive manufacturing machine to become structural composite construction components. At the construction site, the elements could be quickly fitted into a lightweight yet sturdy home frame.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is to bring shipping containers close to where you know you\u2019ll have a lot of plastic, like next to a football stadium,\u201d Perez says. \u201cThen you could use off-the-shelf shredding technology and feed that dirty shredded plastic into a large-scale additive manufacturing system, which could exist in micro-factories, just like bottling centers, around the world. You could print the parts for entire buildings that would be light enough to transport on a moped or pickup truck to where homes are most needed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Single-use plastics are a persistent source of environmental pollution, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}