Eli5 why we can’t melt plastic down and use it to add to asphalt

Question

I keep reading about how most plastic can’t be recycled and goes to the landfills instead.

With our technology, why can’t we melt it down, using some sort of scrubbers/filters to capture the emissions, and add it to asphalt or other industrial uses?

At the very least it seems like we could reuse that plastic for non food items that are typically used once and tossed.

In: 9

Answer 1

When I still lived in the UK we used to separate recycled glass by colour, not sure if they still do that 20 years later. I heard that the UK imported far more green glass than it could use (not producing much wine and brown being more common for our beer bottles) so green glass would commonly be crushed and mixed in as an aggregate for our tarmac/asphalt.

edit: heres a reference https://www.glassonline.com/uk-recycled-glass-used-in-road-building/