Plastic roads: A solution to plastic waste

THE EDITOR: Congratulations to John Hadad, co-CEO of Hadco Group, for recycling waste vegetable oil, wastepaper, cardboard, Tetrapak – cartons and milk/juice boxes – and aluminium cans and converting them into US dollars. It is a brave, welcome move.

I am sure he is already considering plastic waste.

What follows here is certainly not new and perhaps no longer considered creative or innovative. The technologies are in use in several parts of the world.

An online search of "New technologies in road building/road surfacing" will provide several sites.

Informative and detailed videos are available of the many new innovative ways to build roads. Of the ones I looked at there are two that stood out as useful here in our country.

1. Plastic road building technology was first developed in India in 2001 by Rajagopalan Vasudevan. He holds the patent for its research and development. India has since constructed 703 km of roadway – surely more since I became aware of the technology – using recycled plastic waste.

The advantages of recycled plastic roads are:

* minimum plastic in landfills, oceans, rivers

* cheaper than asphalt

* reduces carbon emissions

* as durable as traditional hot asphalt mix

Plastic roads are different from standard roads. They are made entirely of plastic or composites of plastic with other materials.

2. GeoWeb

When I found this site I thought how apt it was as a solution for the Manzanilla/Mayaro roadway, La Romain/Oropouche and any roadway near a swamp or river. GeoWeb seems to utilise a road surface and a web like a "honeycomb" (my word) under the surface.

The web is made of strips of polyester or polyethylene fabric, flexible, and is stretched out across the road, then surfaced with some kind of aggregate. The video explains it far better than I can.

What the "honeycomb" does, is allow excess water to flow below the road into river, sea or other catchment area.

Details of this technology are written into the text of the videos.

If we are to claw our way out of the quicksand we have found ourselves in, it would have to be with the help of our business community. The technology could be accessed in a business-to-business arrangement.

Converting waste plastic for road building material can be separated from actual road building, with the finished product also available regionally.

JULIE MORTON

via e-mail