The Pioneers - Indian Cities using Plastic Waste in Bituminous Roads

Chennai

Chennai is one of the first and leading cities in India to implement professor Vasudevan’s technology. It has, so far, used 1.6 Lakh kilos of plastic waste to build 1,035 kilometres of roads. Prominent areas in the city like the N.S.C Bose road, Halls road, Ethiraj Silai street and Sardar Patel street are laid with plastic components.

The Guardian wrote in 2016 : 'Jambulingam Street, Chennai, is a local legend. The tar road in the bustling Nungambakkam area has weathered a major flood, several monsoons, recurring heat waves and a steady stream of cars, trucks and auto rickshaws without showing the usual signs of wear and tear. Built in 2002, it has not developed the mosaic of cracks, potholes or craters that typically make their appearance after it rains. Holding the road together is an unremarkable material: a cheap, polymer glue made from shredded waste plastic.'

“Jambulingam Street is the best I have ever seen in the city so far. When many other roads in the city got damaged, this plastic road has remained in good condition for many years,” said N.Chidambaram, an autorickshaw driver in the locality.

Tamil Nadu as a whole has some 20,000 kms of plastic roads, mostly rural ones. A modified version of the road which adds road scrap to plastic-coated gravel was tested out in 2016 on a highway connecting Chennai with Villupuram. It was the first time plastic road technology was used for a national highway. It is expected to reduce construction costs by 50%.

It was announced in Jan 2019 that Madurai, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram airports to get roads made using plastic waste in a pilot project. Recycled waste will be mixed with bitumen to lay roads. Experts say the technology will ensure that the road made with the waste will not need any maintenance for 15 years. 

As per the plan, the material will be laid on roads within the airport premises first, and then perimeter roads along the compound walls will be laid. If successful, the technique will then be used for taxiways in the airport.

Officials said that since the Chennai airport generates the highest quantity of plastic waste in the region, this could be a good use case for the project.


In New Zealand, the Christchurch International Airport has paved its airport's fire station's premises using recycled plastic and bitumen.

Pune

Pune, which produces more than 200 tonnes of plastic waste each day, has used 3,343 kilos of plastic waste in building 1,430 kilometres of roads in the last two years. The Pune Municipal Corporation tied up with the Rudra Environmental Solution (India) Ltd and gave them a contract of building plastic roads across the city.

Vishakhapatnam

Taking a step further towards becoming a smart city, the municipal corporation had mooted this project in 2016 when they had laid 10 roads across all its zones. In 2017, till December, 16 more roads were completed. The length of various stretches ranged from a few metres to three kilometres. The aim is to construct more and more roads from plastic waste waste wherever re-laying of roads is required and plastic waste is available. 

Indore

Two-time winner of India’s cleanest city title, Indore recycles 100 per cent of its plastic waste and has used 5,000 kilos of waste plastic to build 45 kilometre stretch of roads in the last two years. 'The strength and finishing of roads when waste plastic is used is much better than tar. These roads have a better resistance to water stagnation. We noticed that areas in Indore where plastic was used to build roads saw less water clogging during monsoons as the roads didn’t develop potholes. In other words, the life span of the road is substantially increased', said the Swachh Bharat Mission Consultant, Indore Municipal Corporation.

Surat

Surat finally heaved a sigh of relief during monsoons last year. The idea of using plastic-bitumen mix was executed in January 2017. The diamond city has used 90,000 kilos of waste plastic to lay 15.91 kilometres of roads. The problem of potholes significantly reduced last year as no cracks developed in areas where roads were layered with waste plastic says Akshay Pandya, Executive Engineer, Road Development Department, Surat Municipal Corporation.

Lucknow

The Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) is constructing a 10 km long road, from Gomti Nagar Police Station to the Indian Institute Of Management Lucknow, using plastic waste. Padmashri awardee and reputed Scientist Rajagopalan Vasudevan, also known as the ‘Plastic Man Of India’ will be leading the project.

According to the project’s Chief Engineer, Indushekhar Singh, mixing plastic waste increases roads’ durability by 40-50 per cent. “We use less than 50-micron plastic and around 8-10 per cent of plastic waste is being mixed in coal tar”, he added. 

“LDA will be following all the guidelines of the Central Road Research Institute in the construction of this road,” Singh said. Singh, told the media, “The process doesn’t require any complex machinery. It just needs to segregate plastic waste to a particular size, heat it and mix it with bitumen to bind it.” 

“Using plastic waste can help India, which has the world’s second largest road network, in reducing road accidents deaths. Potholes, a common feature of roads in India, are responsible for one-tenth of deaths that occurred in 2017 due to road accidents in the country”, professor Vasudevan explained to the media.

The poor are suffering deleterious effects of unbearable heat..

A 2017 news report said that over 4000 people died due to heat related injuries over the past four years, in Andhra Pradesh and Telengana alone. The actual heat related injuries and deaths are far more as causes other than the direct reasons like heat stroke and dehydration are seldom accounted for. For instance, dehydration also leads to respiratory and renal failure, especially for those who are prone to heart and kidney ailments. In 2010, Ahemdabad recorded 65 deaths due to heatwave, but in the same period, there were 800 more deaths. Reportedly, various states are developing strategies to minimize deaths.  

A study of deaths during a heatwave in ahmedabad in 2010 found that there had been 43 % more deaths than the reference period in another year. The estimate of additional deaths in the heat wave in france in 2003 also range from 20-50 % for various cities.

Joyashree Roy, an economist at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, found that already, most days in the summer are too hot and humid to be doing heavy physical labor without protection, with wet-bulb temperatures far exceeding the thresholds of most international occupational health standards.

And yet, walk through the city on a stifling hot day in June, and you’ll find people pedaling bicycle rickshaws, hauling goods on their heads, constructing towers of glass and steel. Only a few people, like herself, Dr. Roy pointed out, are protected in air-conditioned homes and offices. “Those who can are doing this. Those who can’t are becoming worse,” she said. “The social cost is high in that sense.”

Given that all cause mortality figures run into 10 million a year in india, increased mortality during the summer season as temperatures climb still higher, could result in hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.

A study said that the chance of a wet-bulb temperature above 34°C occurring in India, China, and the Amazon is greater than 33% and the chance of a wet-bulb temperature above 35°C occurring in those same areas is greater than 15%. Since those areas are very densely populated, the annual exposure to wet-bulb temperatures of 35°C or higher could be approximately one million person-days.

Another study found that 75 percent of the population of South Asia will experience extremely dangerous heat waves by 2100 if no action is taken to fight climate change. Four percent will experience unsurvivable heat — that’s 69 million people at today’s population level.

It's not just about the heat... it's about how many people are poor, how many are old, who has to go outside to work, who has air-conditioning.

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The compiled report of six newspapers of Orissa noted 1470 deaths and 1662 injuries in the year 1998-99 due to severe heat wave. Evidences of heat wave incidences available from different parts of India, e.g., Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, clearly indicate that most mortality took place outdoor, among those who live at poverty threshold.

Urban and rural poor who can not afford shelters even with minimum living quality, and those living alone and can not afford access to cooling systems are at higher risk of adverse health effects from extreme heat exposures. In rural India, for example, there are evidences of influences of tropical heat on the prevalence of tropical diseases - prevalence of malaria, iron deficiency in sugar cane cutters, anaemia among tea pluckers, farmers, tobacco and coir workers, suggesting that a large working population are already in pathological state.

In a study in 2009, during the month of May and June, people in most Gujarat districts were limited by the prevailing climatic conditions to tolerating70 to 90 min or less for habitual exposures. Tolerance time of people in the districts of Ahmedabad, Anand, Banaskantha, Gandhinagar, Kheda, Mehasana, Patan, Rajkot and Surendranagar appeared to be markedly less during the summer months. Relatively, however, Surat, Amreli and Kachch were more comfortable regions to live in.

Acknowledgement : This section is sourced entirely from this study.