Roads In India Made from Plastic Waste? Hey! Meet Professor Who invented this technique

A government order in November 2015 made the use of waste plastic, along with bituminous mixtures, for road construction compulsory for all road developers in the country. This is to help address India's rising plastic waste disposal crisis. Indian 'Plastic Man' Professor Rajagopalan Vasudevan, Professor of Chemistry at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, has developed the technology for this.

Plastic has increasingly become an integral part of all human needs. Because of the advantages of plastic, plastic carry bags, packaging material, bottles, cups, and various other products slowly replaced anything made from other materials. Plastic is durable, simple to make, lightweight, unbreakable, odorless and resistant to chemical agents.

Plastic garbage is widely seen throughout the world and has caused many problems. Plastic waste clogs drains and cause flooding. It chokes animals eating plastic bags, and so on. Plastics found in fields block germination and avoid absorption by rainwater.

The results of the laboratory mixing of waste plastic with heated bitumen and coating, the mixture over stone were good. In 2002 he introduced the use of plastic waste on a road built within his college premises.

This technology was patented to the Thiagarajar College of Engineering in 2006.

Up to now, 1,00,000 km of plastic roads have been laid across the country using his technology, which was patented by the college in 2006 for. "The technical know-how and guidance is free for anyone in the country who wants to lay plastic-tar roads," says the man, who won the Padma Shri this year for his method of building all-weather roads.

According to his estimates, India would need 100 lakh tonnes of plastic waste if it were to use the plastic-tar technology to lay the 46 multi-lane lakh-kilometer roads that cross the country.