Bridging the Gap Between Waste and Resource

Your next coffee cup, milk jug or yogurt container may end up under a platoon of soldiers marching in formation or a convoy of trucks transporting them back to barracks.



Axion Internationalt is building bridges for the Army Transportation Corps at Fort Eustis, Virginia and elsewhere. The main structural components of the bridges are 100% recycled post consumer and industrial plastics.



Using a proprietary process, Axion blends used plastics into Recycled Structural Composites, the first products of their kind that can support heavy loads. Axion makes railroad ties, marine pilings, and bridges with them. Imagine flimsy transient packaging transformed into durable infrastructure. Wood rots, steel rusts, concrete erodes over time. But plastics are forever- or at least many, many years- and what better than to shift them from our landfills to our roads, buildings and docks? Using recycled plastics saves the trees, mining and milling of steel, and the energy to make concrete- which accounts for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

This bridge in the video below will support an M1 Tank and can handle up to 80 tons. The old bridge supported 4 tons.



With reduced maintenance and lower costs to construct. These bridges pay back in green, too: a 34-1 return on upfront investment over the life of the bridge. That’s green in the bank, as well as green in the field. And by using recycled plastics, we can drill for less oil and fight fewer wars over it. So this is good for our troops as well. Retired General Norman Schwarzkopf once said, “Strategy is for amateurs, logistics is for professionals.” The professionals of the Army and Axion are mastering the logistics of transforming trash into transportation.