Highway stretch gets plastic makeover

In an attempt to bid adieu to the usual practice of carpeting roads with bitumen, the highway sector is moving towards adopting innovative ways of using waste plastic for re-laying and re-carpeting roads. A case in point is that of a stretch near Vickravandi in Villupuram district of the state where a four-lane stretch of about a km of the NH towards Chennai has been re-laid by Ulundurpet Expressways with the usage of innovative plastic technology developed by the Centre for Studies on Solid Waste Management of the Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE). In its entirety, the process involved double saving as the existing road has also been reclaimed for re-laying as about 65% of the reclaimed materials and 35% of new aggregate coated with waste plastic formed the newly repaired stretch, Dean, TCE, R. Vasudevan, said, adding that the decision to apply the technology for using waste plastic for road laying was taken for the NH stretch in question after prolonged and rigorous quality tests of load-carrying capacity of reclaimed materials when used with plastic-coated aggregate. It is worth mentioning here that the road strength has gone up and there has been a considerable cost saving besides it also meant that 65% saving of stones quarried from hills and a similar saving on bitumen. The other advantage is that the road level does not rise as no additional layer is placed over the existing one, he added.