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

Adding it to asphalt would be nonsensical. The material can easily be recycled, this is actually somewhat common practice in the US for example, altho for some fucked reason illegal in germany lol. Adding plastic would objectively lower the quality and recyclability