Environment dept involves municipalities, plastic wastes to use in road construction

Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, May 11—If save environment is the buzzword to saving state’s depleting greens, environment department has found a real solution. The department has tied up with the Indian Plastic Federation (IPF) to help building roads in municipalities and panchayats in Bengal using plastic wastes.

“We have already built an one-kilometre road using the plastic wastes in Kalyani Municipality. The department has called up all the 126 municipalities and 21 Zilla Parisads on May 15 at West Bengal Pollution Control Board office in Salt Lake, where the idea will be floated with request to administrative heads for implementing the project,” chief law officer, state environment department, Biswajit Mukherjee, told Hindustan Times, on Monday.

Though a belated move, experiment with using plastic waste in road construction, as one of the solutions to plastic waste disposal in West Bengal, such experiments are already in vogue in states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra. According to the chief law officer, polymer blended bitumen will be laid while constructing new roads. One of the unique features of the project is that waste laminated plastic carry bags, and pouches, largely used for food packaging, would be used for road construction.

“The only problem of this technology is collecting plastic wastes lying on roads. We will advice the municipalities and the panchayats to involve the rag pickers on monthly basis, so that supply-side of plastic waste remain unaffected. This will not only keep the roads clean, at the same time help saving our environment in a much better way. Banning the plastic carry bag will not help, at least in West Bengal as a large number of people are engaged with this industry. But implementing this project would help it going a long way in solving the long-standing problem of environmental pollution by plastic goods,” Mukherjee said.

The chief law officer of the state environment department observed that the use of thin plastic bags to pack and to carry various materials including household articles has become a common practice all over the country. However the disposal of the waste plastic bags in large quantities has been a problem and is of great concern, particularly in big cities, like Kolkata. The mixing up of these waste plastic bags with other biodegradable organic waste materials in the garbage of the urban areas has been the main cause of the problem. Therefore attempts are being made in some cities to limit or even to prohibit the use of the thin plastic bags for packing and other common use, so as to control this undesirable waste material from getting mixed up with the other organic garbage. In case it is possible to find useful application for the waste plastic bags, there will be substantial scrap value for this waste product and therefore they will be collected and sold by interested persons, instead of being littered or thrown out in the dust bins or into the road side drains.

According to him, usage of plastic waste in road construction would also help in cutting down road building cost. Using of plastic waste to the extent of 10-15 per cent of the total concrete mix, inclusive of bitumen, and would save road construction cost significantly with bitumen price moving currently between Rs 35-40 per kg. In this method, waste plastics are directly blended mixing of shredded polymer with hot bitumen at 160 °C at the time of construction.

Earlier, such experiments on a mini scale were undertaken at IIT-Kharagpur campus and within the area of Haldia Petrochemicals. The University of Madurai, Mukherjee said, have pioneered the technology for blending polymer with bitumen in road. Later, the Delhi-based Indian Centre for Plastics in Environment has come forward to spread the technology across the country.

santanu_saraswati@hotmail.com