New Delhi: The government has made itmandatory for road developers to use wasteplastic along with bituminous mixes forroad construction to overcome the growingproblem of disposal of plastic waste in In-dia’s urban centres.
Road developers will now have to usewaste plastic along with hot mixes for con-structing bitumen roads within 50 km of pe-riphery of any city that has a population ofover five lakh. In recently released guide-lines for developers, the government saidthat in case of non-availability of wasteplastic, the developer has to seek the roadtransport & highways ministry’s approvalfor constructing only bitumen roads.
“Urban local bodies, which are usuallyshort of financial resources, can makemoney by selling the plastic waste generat-ed by cities to road developers. They cansigns memorandums of understandingwith the road construction companies,” asenior government official told ET.
India generates 56 lakh tonne of plasticwaste annually. As per a study by the Cen-tral Pollution Control Board, 60 large citiesin India generate over 15,000 tonne of plas-tic waste every day. Delhi generates close to
7,000 tonne of waste every day, of whichover 10% is pure plastic but cannot be dis-posed even by waste-to-energy plants be-cause of environmental reasons.
In an observation earlier this year, the Su-preme Court had said that the country wassitting on a plastic time bomb.
Plastic will add to the longevity of roadsby making them water re-sistant and also increasingthe resistance of roads tochange in weather.
The government expectsthis measure to bring downthe cost as well for road de-velopers, from about .̀ 10crore for one km of roadlength at present.
“The cost factor is yet to beanalysed, but it will beslightly less than 100% bitu-men,” the official said.
The ministry will also en-courage state governments and rural de-velopment ministry to make use of plasticwaste mandatory in construction of roads.
“The same technology can also be used forconstruction of rural roads as it will en-hance their quality as well as longevity.These roads can have a plastic coatingmixed with bitumen,” the official said.
Using Waste Plastic for RoadConstruction Mandatory NowMove to overcome growing problem of plastic waste disposal
Developerhas to seekministry nodfor bitumen-only roads incase wasteplastic is notavailable
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