Put Plastic Where it Belongs. Err.. into the Ground?
In just the first month of the new decade, the hot topic on everyone’s minds is something we are all too aware of — tackling climate change. Bush fires have swept through Australia, killing over a billion wildlife. Scientists say that these fires are a direct result of the warming of the earth, and will become more frequent unless urgent measures are taken to contain climate change. These measures will have to be taken on multiple fronts if we are to leave a habitable planet for the generations to come.
It is in this light, that it is heartening to see that India’s biggest company, Reliance Industries, has taken an innovative approach to tackle one of the biggest contributors to pollution, and the choking of our environment. The company has piloted a programme to build roads using end-of-life, post-consumer plastics. By shredding these plastics and blending them into bitumen to create a superior and more durable compound to pave roads with.
Plastics and Environment
Let’s get this out of the way, to start off. While we all know that plastics harm the environment when not disposed correctly, we’d much rather opt for the convenience it offers in our daily lives. Plastic is cheap, light, versatile, and durable. Really durable. It can take up to 10,000 years for a single item of plastic to decompose. This means that we are generating plastic at a much faster rate than our planet can take.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board, India’s annual plastics demand is 14 million metric tonnes (MMT). Out of that, 9.4 MMT goes back into waste every single year. State and municipal bodies across the country are slowly introducing measures to ban single-use plastics, implementing waste segregation schemes, etc. The reform is not nearly fast or convenient enough for most of us. Further, while waste is segregated at home or society level, it all ultimately ends up in landfills. Proper segregation of waste is our biggest challenge.
Recycling and converting waste into electrical energy is a possible solution. But the scale at which we generate waste, far exceeds the capacity to manage it. A couple of years ago, Mumbai faced gloomy skies when a fire raged at a large garbage-dumping ground, for days at an end, making it hard for residents in the vicinity to breathe. The problem needs to be addressed on a war footing speed.
Unintended Consequences of Bad Roads
Across India, in cities big or small, citizens unite to curse a scourge we haven’t been able to fully rid ourselves of — potholes. When roads are built with low-quality materials (and we shall not go into corrupt reasons), they become more susceptible to the elements than they should be. Every monsoon, we hear about gripes associated with new craters stubbornly inserting themselves into the middle of a highway, somewhere. These potholes often take months to fill. The varying quality of the materials used in the fix, and the inadequacy of the road itself causes further erosion.
Innumerable reports come in of people falling off their bikes because of hitting a particularly deep pothole and injuring themselves or worse. Traffic slowing around potholed stretches causes jams extending well past them, ensuring we all take that much longer to get back home. Not to mention the added fumes our vehicles insert into the air, the extra fuel burnt (a burn that extends deep into our wallets). And the simple impact on life when a fire engine or an ambulance can’t reach for an emergency in time. The impacts of that small pothole are wide ranging and can be all encompassing.
Highway to a Greener Planet
It is in the context of all this that we need to take the news of Reliance’s innovative solution to find better uses for plastic waste. The company went ahead and built a 40 km stretch of road in Nagothane near Raigad in May 2019, just before the onset of monsoon. The project used plastic waste from an employee township, where waste has been diligently segregated for the past fifteen years. Further, the process used a modified hot-mix plant in order to automate and enhance efficiency.
The result of this is that in the record torrential storms that followed, the newly-laid stretch of road saw no water seepage or erosion. This was even when the region was submerged for many days! It is also worth noting that the area sees many heavy trucks plied as the transport their goods to and from India’s largest commercial port — Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.
The green impact won’t just be felt on the planet, but also on the balance sheets of municipalities, state governments, and the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). By introducing plastic into the mix, cost savings of up to ₹1 lakh per kilometre of road can be achieved. To put this into context, if the NHAI used this compound to build all 40,000 lane km it has committed to in 2020–21, it would save about ₹400 crores. No small feat, we say!
Magic Pill?
It is nobody’s contention that the climate emergency can be tackled by one single company, with one single solution. But it certainly is good to see a company like Reliance take the lead with investing in the kind of Research and Development that leads to innovation like this. Together with other initiatives taken by industry, government, and citizens, we will all have to come together to support and clear the path for solution-oriented thinking to get out of the labs and onto our streets!
