Page 25 - Plastics News July 2020

The Road Made Of Plastics

1 lakh km of road in the country is built using plastic The ministry is pushing for plastic waste to be used in
waste, the government aims to double it highway construction, especially National Highways,
within a 50km border of urban areas with a population of
The central government has been using plastic waste in 5 lakh or more. According to reports Ministry of Road
road construction to properly utilise the material which Transport & Highways has embarked upon a mission for
otherwise is not recycled. So far, one lakh kilometre of utilising waste plastic in a big way. It has mobilised
road has been constructed using plastic waste, nearly 26 thousand people across the country for
Hindustan Times' sister publication Hindustan reported.
spreading awareness on plastic waste management.
The construction of every kilometre of road required Over 61 thousand hours of shramdaan has been given to
nine tonnes of bitumen and one tonne of plastic waste. collect plastic waste. This has resulted in collection of
This means for every kilometre of road, one tonne
nearly 18 thousand kilograms of waste plastic
bitumen is saved, which costs about Rs 30,000.Plastic throughout the country," the ministry said in a
roads consist of 6-8 per cent plastic, while 92-94 per cent statement.
is bitumen.
The reason this technique has been gaining popularity is
that the benefit is two-fold. The most obvious boon here
is that we're finding a way to reuse all of the plastic
waste that would otherwise sit in dumps, or be
pointlessly burned to create even more pollution. The
basic process involves gathering all of this waste plastic,
usually by employing manual scavengers and sanitation
workers. All of it is dumped into massive shredders
subsidized by the government a decade or so ago. That
way, when the bitumen (also known as asphalt or tar) is
added in and the mix melted together, this shredded
plastic is also melted down to an extent and acts as a
superior binding agent for the resulting asphalt
concrete. The plastic mix is more heat resistant than
regular asphalt, meaning the road is less likely to
weaken over time.
Union minister Nitin Gadkari had announced the usage of
plastic waste in road construction in 2016. Since then, India isn't the only country to attempt to construct
plastic waste has been used in constructing one lakh plastic composite roads either, but we are certainly one
kilometre of road in 11 states. In this financial year, the of the first few. Australia, Indonesia, the UK, and the US
figure will double, according to Hindustan. have all built plastic composite roads to one extent or
another.
The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) used
plastic waste in its roads for the first time in 2018. The
MCG has now made the use of plastic waste mandatory in
the construction of arterial roads. Assam started using
the waste material from this year Plastic has been used
in the 270-kilometre-long Jammu Kashmir National
highway. About 1.6 tonne of plastic waste was used in the
two-kilometre-long stretch of Delhi-Meerut highway
news UP Gate, according to Hindustan. It has also been
used in constructing the road connecting Dhaula Kuan to
the airport in Delhi, the report in Hindustan said.
India has actually been building plastic roads for years
now, starting with Tamilnadu way back in 2000. It's a
major improvement for India, which has the second-
largest road network in the world.

July 2020 25 Plastics News