Roads from plastic waste. Great idea!

What a great idea! R Vasudevan, Head of the Department of Chemistry, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai has pioneered a way to use a mix of shredded plastic waste in making roads. t’s mixed in with the “metal” used to make the road and assists in binding it better, making it capable of withstanding heavy rains, reducing the amount to bitumen required. The development team believes it also offers better road grip than rubberized roads. Sounds seriously win-win to me. Much better than the blind eye all the authorities in India have been turning to the huge plastic waste problem we have here. Here’s a picture of these folks standing on their road. The lady’s the head of the college. I admire people who try to do something about the problems they see. I’ve been working with my friends, Prakash Vani and Himadri Ghosh to see if we can also do our bit, and we’ve succeeded in making some viable looking products from plastic waste using handlooms and devices that do not require any more energy input and can be made at home by even the poorest of the poor. I’ll have a story and a webpage about that effort up very shortly.