Himachal to use plastic waste for building roads

The pilot project of building three stretches of road with plastic waste proving successful, Himachal government will now use the entire plastic waste collected in the last month for road surfacing.

The entire plastic waste (1,381 quintals) would be used for laying plastic-bitumen mix roads in the state. This waste would be sufficient to tar a stretch of 138 km a government spokesperson said.

The State Pollution Control Board in collaboration with the Public Works Department had built three road stretches on a pilot basis by using shredded plastic waste on the outskirts of Shimla.

The results have been good in the past four months as there was no major damage to the roads laid by using plastic-asphalt mix. The plastic blend  helps in lowering the cost of tarring and increases the durability of roads because of higher binding strength of plastic.

Experts say if plastic waste could be mixed up to 15 percent, this would lead to saving of equivalent quantity of asphalt, reducing the overall construction cost. The plastic waste replaces 10 to 15 percent of the bitumen and thus saves Rs.35,000 to Rs.45,000 per km of road surfacing.

On Oct 2, 2009 Himachal Pradesh Government banned production and sale of all types of polythene based items made of non-biodegradable materials.