Reliance Industries to use plastics in road construction
- Tejas Rokhade
- Jan 31, 2020
- 2 min read
India, that uses about 14 million tonnes of plastic annually, lacks an organized system for the management of plastic waste, leading to widespread littering. Amidst growing concerns over pollution, Reliance Industries is launching a project to use plastics in road construction.
Crux of the Matter
RIL seeks to work with NHAI and individual states to potentially supply a plastics-infused mix to make roads.
Reliance wants to use light plastics, carry bags or snack wrappers, that are typically not viable to recycle and that end up in landfills, street corners or oceans and rather mix it with bitumen, a formula which is cheaper and long-lasting.
Vipul Shah, the COO of the RIL petrochemicals said, ” This can be a game-changing project both for our environment and our roads.”
Sunil Dahiya, Analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air said, “It is happening internationally and now has started percolating to India too, though it’s at a very early stage.”
PM Narendra Modi is urging India to end the consumption of single-use plastics by 2022.
Curiopedia
Plastic roads are made entirely of plastic or of composites of plastic with other materials. Plastic roads are different from standard roads in the respect that standard roads are made from asphalt concrete, which consists of mineral aggregates and asphalt. There are two kinds of Plastic roads. One consists of modular, hollow and prefabricated road elements made from consumer waste plastics and others that consist of an asphalt mix with plastic waste incorporated into the asphalt mixture. The technology was initially developed and patented by Rajagopalan Vasudevan of the Thiagarajar College of Engineering. This method will help in making roads much faster and also will save the environment from dangerous plastic waste. More Info
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