Ms. Mahnoor Ishaq, Green Blogger, Dept. of Environmental Science, GCWUS.
Engineer Toby McCartney has pioneered a way to use plastic waste to build roads. This could replace bitumen (an oil product), reduce plastic waste and create longer-lasting roads.
There are 40 Million Kilometers of roads in the world made using Hundreds of Millions of Barrels of Oil.
Toby’s idea has the Potential to chip away at the three major issues with road repair; reduce our reliance on bitumen which is a fossil fuel and the waste plastic epidemic that we all see in the world today.
Toby start-up MacRebur is based in Scotland. By replacing bitumen in asphalt the firm believes they can make a significant reduction in fossil fuel usage and can use around 3kg to 10kg of waste plastics for every ton of asphalt created.
The technique relies on plastic pellets made from waste including household waste, commercial waste and farm waste. These pellets can be mixed with rock and a much smaller amount of bitumen to create a stronger, longer-lasting pothole free road.
It is the first of its kind to open in Netherlands and has three times longer life expectancy than in traditional road structures.
So, plastic roads can help to solve the problem of waste plastic which is a big threat for the environment and also help to produce a pothole-free cleaner planet.
Mahnoor Ishaq
Dept. of Environmental Sciences
The Earth Needs Love