DON BOSCO CHURCH VADODARA

Plastic remains one of the most discussed wastes and inadequate waste management, it is tough to say whether plastics were actually a boon. In this video of 3:45 minutes, we can see Padma Shri winner Dr. Rajgopalan Vasudevan fondly called the 'Plastic Man of India' found a way to reuse common plastic waste and to make durable pothole-free roads.

Nowadays we all depend on plastics. We get all things packed in plastic bags such as clothes, snacks or food, vegetables, etc. Plastic is a non-biodegradable solid substance and most of us would say we should avoid using plastic bags. As per Dr. Vasudevan, "plastic is the friend of a poor man." In villages, people use plastic mats, plastic chairs, plastic carry bags without it, they cannot live. So we cannot ban plastics, but we have to find a better method to dispose of it.

As the call for a ban of plastic grows stronger across the country, Vasudevan feels that plastic industries must be supported instead people can use plastics. And so he thought of a 2 in 1 idea to get rid of plastic waste by making roads from it that too without making any pollution.

Dr.Vasudevan conducted an experiment in his lab, where he found the bond of bitumen and plastic can give more strength to the road than the ordinary ones. The process of making plastic road is also very easy. The plastic scrap is added to hot bitumen which applies a coat on it and this process does not release any toxic fumes which is good thing to the environment.

To make 1km of single lane road 10 tons of bitumen is needed but plastic road uses 9 ton of bitumen and a 1 ton of plastic, which means 10 lakh carry bags. As per the Central Pollution Control Board, since 2013 India has been generating around 5.6 million tones of plastic waste in a year. It has since been used to build over 100,000 km of roads at least 11 states in India under his supervision.

There are many benefits to make plastic roads. A low-cost disruptive technology to convert plastic waste of any kind into paved roads that are twice as strong, are waterproof, last up to 60 years and have almost zero maintenance cost up to 10 years. Plastic that takes thousands of years to decompose can be used to make plastic roads which is a great help to the environment.

Dr.Vasudevan's innovation was patented In 2006 and he chooses to share the technology with the Indian government for free of cost the GoI and made it mandatory In November 2015 for road developers to mix plastic with bitumen while constructing roads.