A recycling program that turns discarded plastic into construction-grade building blocks will become a sustained fixture in Tucson after City Council approved a 4-year contract that makes Tucson the first in the world to scale up the program to a city-wide service.
The council unanimously approved an agreement with ByFusion to bring the company’s waste diversion operations to Tucson. ByFusion’s machines take plastic waste and use steam and compression to churn out 22-pound blocks, called ByBlocks, that fit together with interlocking pegs. Since the material is all superheated, ByFusion can take the discarded food packaging, plastic grocery bags and bubble wrap that standard recycling plants often can’t process.
The city will pay ByFusion $1 million over four years to turn residents’ plastic into ByBlocks. Tucson’s also agreed to construct a production facility at the Los Reales Sustainability Campus at an estimated cost of $2.4 million, where ByFusion will install the block-making machine and later add on capacity for office space and storage.