India Started Building Plastic Roads In 2002, With Over 1 Lakh Kilometre Already Built

Earlier last week, the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways announced that it plans to use plastic waste for large scale road construction across the country.

It's encouraging the National Highways Authority of India, as well as state bodies to take up the initiative.

Images courtesy: Reuters

Plastic roads to the fore

The ministry announced on Tuesday it's pushing for plastic waste to be used in highway construction, especially National Highways, within a 50km border of urban areas with a population of 5 lakh or more.

"Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has embarked upon a mission for utilising waste plastic in a big way. It has mobilised nearly 26 thousand people across the country for spreading awareness on plastic waste management. Over 61 thousand hours of shramdaan has been given to collect plastic waste. This has resulted in collection of nearly 18 thousand kilograms of waste plastic throughout the country," the ministry said in a statement.

Under the 'Swachhta Hi Sewa' initiative, the government has also undertaken awareness programmes to convince the general public to cut down on their everyday plastic usage.

It's a great idea, possibly killing two birds with one stone. What you might be surprised to hear however is that this isn't necessarily a new idea for India, just one that hasn't been widely adopted yet.

Years of pioneering unnoticed

You see, India has actually been building plastic roads for years now, 17 years to be exact. According to MBA Polymers, a plastic recycling company, one of the very first plastic roads built in India was in Chennai's Nungambakkam area, back in 2002.

India has built 21,000 miles of road ways using plastic waste. pic.twitter.com/iCo7rOwT5H

¡ª Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) October 5, 2019

In fact, they continue to say that there are "more than 21,000 miles of plastic roads in India, mostly in rural areas", and that was back in 2016. Approximately half of them were in Tamil Nadu.

There are other mentions of this as well. KK Plastic Waste Management for instance, based in Bengaluru, claims to have their own plastic polymer blend made from waste plastic. With the backing of the Central Road Research Institute and Center for Transport Engineering, they say they've so far laid 2,000 km of plastic road in Bengaluru, using 8,000 tons of plastic waste retrieved from garbage.

Other states like Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Manipur, Kerala, and Goa have also followed suit after successful demonstrations of plastic-built roads.

But the Centre made it mandatory in 2015 for all major road developers to use plastic waste for road construction. So by 2018, about 1 lakh kilometre of roads in at least 11 states were constructed using discarded plastic. It's a major improvement for India, which has the second-largest road network in the world.

Why plastic roads at all?

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. It's also close to twice as durable as regular asphalt and, because of the improved adhesive forces of the plastic, less likely to develop cracks and potholes.

There is still of course, no specific research on how much microplastic the wearing down of these roads could generate over time, what with constant cycles of heat, rain, and pressure from vehicles on them. It's at the very least however better than the alternative ways the sanitation department usually deals with plastic.

Plastic roads around the world

India isn't the only country to attempt to construct plastic composite roads either, but we are certainly one of the first few. Australia, Indonesia, the UK, and the US have all built plastic composite roads to one extent or another. However, no country has yet begun construction of them on a massive scale.

Earlier in January this year, the UK greenlit a Rs 14 crore trial to build plastic asphalt roads, in an attempt to deal with the millions of tons of plastic waste sitting in their landfills. And in the Netherlands, they've been attempting to build plastic-only roads, starting with a bike path in Rotterdam. Not only will this utilize waste plastic, but cutting out asphalt entirely will also reduce the carbon footprint of the whole process.

It's certainly an idea that needs more funding for research and development, to scale up the processes involved. It's not necessarily a perfect solution, even if done completely right, but it's certainly better than anything else we've got going on right now.