Can We Use Waste Plastic To Improve Our Roads?

Here at ISL Waste Management we harp on a LOT about plastic waste and the damage it is doing to our environment. It is ruining our oceans and polluting our earth, but what if we could do something useful with it instead?

Aside from the normal recycling process, there are other options for old plastic bottles, bags and straws and officials in Port Elizabeth have some ground breaking ideas.

Vicky Knoetze, DA MEC for Roads and Public Works in the South African city has suggested that they use waste plastic to help repair and improve their road network. Imagine it. Old plastic products being used to repair potholes and those repairs being of good enough quality to last months longer than traditional methods.

“There are more than 40 million kilometres of road in the world for which hundreds of thousands of drums of tar were used. Plastic waste could replace a lot of this. Plastic waste includes normal household as well as commercial waste, most of which end up in our oceans,” Knoetze said.

A company in the Netherlands who will potentially be involved in the project says the roads will be able to withstand temperatures of -40°C and 80°C. The use of plastic should make construction easier and up to 70% faster, costs could be cut by over 50% and ideally the results would be longer lasting.

Back in the UK, the use of plastic on roads is already a possibility. Toby McCartney has revealed that his Scottish start-up MacRebur is working with councils, in the hope of convincing them of the benefits.

His company produces a road mix additive called MR6, which apparently makes roads 60% stronger and longer-lasting than the ones on which people currently drive.

Watch the video below: