Necessity is the mother of invention. But here, the situation is quite the opposite.
Experts for long have advocated the use of plastics in building roads given that it insulates the road from damage caused by waterlogging and also reduces costs.
Even the National Rural Roads Development Agency notes, “Plastic Roads, are found to perform better compared to those constructed with conventional bitumen. Further, it has been found that such roads were not subjected to stripping when come in contact with water.”
But the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) until now, did not pay any heed to the advice, despite the city's roads being plagued with potholes.
Now, not finding a way to dispose the tons of plastic that it has collected as waste, authorities in Bengaluru have decided to use the plastic for asphalting roads. An official order of the same will be issued on Monday, reported The New Indian Express.
“The government has banned plastic in Bengaluru. Yet, the usage has not come down and this has affected our garbage disposal system too. Hence, we have decided to make use of the recovered plastic in repairing of roads,” N Manjunatha Prasad, Commissioner, BBMP told Bangalore Mirror following a meeting between CM Siddaramaiah, Urban Development and BBMP officials.
Using plastics in the past had proved useful, but the BBMP had been reluctant to use it for all roads. It was six years ago that roads inside Bangalore University’s Jnana Bharathi campus were built using plastic waste.
