Evaluation of household waste materials for façade components in primary educational workshops. Degradation behavior and mechanical properties of aged samples

Abstract This article presents a pioneering experimental campaign on waste materials that rigorously tests numerous specimens to study their degradation behavior and the unreported mechanical properties of aged samples. The novel results of these tests, along with the mechanical properties and fire properties which new waste samples obtained from a previous article have are analyzed to check the feasibility of employing these household wastes in educational workshops for the self-construction of facades. Numerous previous studies on plastics degradation have analyzed the tensile strength reduction of polymers that compose the household waste studied in this project. However, no similar research projects on the degradation behavior of unprocessed Tetra Pak containers are reported in the literature. Most former studies were carried out in laboratories while few research projects studied waste degradation under real environmental conditions. The main results are: finding the unreported Tetra Pak mechanical properties of aged samples, discarding polystyrene household waste and some glues for exterior applications, and succeeding in introducing a TiO2-based finishing for Tetra Pak elements.