Tata Steel subsidy builds eco-friendly roads from recycled plastic

What if the plastic bags thrown on the road ended up becoming a part of the same road? Jamshedpur Utility and Services Company (JUSCO) has come up with a similar technology. [caption id=“attachment_323804” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] Started in Jamshedpur itself, the Tata Steel subsidy has constructed 12-15 km roads and widened another 22 roads using recycled plastic. The company is using the bitumen technology on wasted plastic, which includes everything from plastic bags to biscuit packets. “As far as we know, Jamshedpur is the only city in eastern India where bitumen technology (Dry Process) patented by Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE), Tirupparankuram, Madurai, has been implemented on accumulated waste plastic for the first time”, said Gaurav Anand, Senior Manager (Quality Assurance) of JUSCO. Claiming that there is no maintenance cost involved for the first five years, Anand, who is an environment engineer, said that for every stretch of such one km long and four metre wide road, one tonne of bitumen costing Rs 50,000 is saved. The use of bitumen has been reduced by 7 per cent ever since JUSCO began using waste plastic in road construction work, he said, adding that the quality and longevity of roads made of waste plastic-aggregate-bitumen was two times better than bitumen road. Besides being water resistant, it has better binding property, higher softening point, can withstand high temperature and higher load, has lower penetration value, costs less as compared to bitumen road and has no toxic gas emission, Pratyush Dandpat, Deputy Manager (Quality Assurance) of JUSCO said. Though there is great demand for the technology, including from Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand governments, but “we do not have any plan to commercialise it but to serve society. We have even received a request from Nigeria, which wants to replicate it in their country”, Anand said. Due to the JUSCO initiative, the city will now have strong, durable, eco-friendly roads which will also relieve the residents from the sight of heaps of plastic waste. (with inputs from PTI)