Plastic Roads

Rubbish dumping of waste in Bangalore is reaching crisis levels as rapid economic growth, overcrowding and poor urban planning combine.

India’s Silicon Valley produces some 5,000 tonnes of waste a day, of which 1,500 tonnes are plastic. Only a 25% goes for recycling and the rest is dumped in land fill or get burnt, generating greenhouse gas emissions.

A local businessman Ahmad Khan has taken it on himself to rid the city of its stinking garbage menace. Khan runs a firm named as KK Plastic Waste Management that aims to “create eternal scarcity of garbage” in the city.

KK Plastic has been building roads using the waste of plastic for a decade. It has been working with Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) since 2002.

The Ministry of Environment and Forest has authorised civic bodies to use waste plastic to make roads, but red tape and policy paralysis have discouraged wide-spread use of technology.

Khanalso said "we can lay 500 km road in a year. But as you know, things get stuck at the bureaucratic level. Since the garbage problem became a headache for the authorities and they got to know about the importance of our work, now they are giving us more assignments,”

Khan’s firm supplies of waste plastic to BBMP, it cleans and shreds it. Eight parts of plastic are mixed with 100 parts bitumen to create a hard-wearing road surface.

Acknowledging the viability of the technology, the Public Works department has included instruction to use waste plastic in the road construction.

Though using plastic waste increases the cost of road construction by Rs 500 per cubic metre, but it also helps the civic body cut on cost of waste management and reduces the emissions.

By: Saksham Gupta
Content: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/01/15/plastic-roads-help-solve-bangalore-rubbish-crisis/