Are Plastic Roads Ready for Commercial Launch?

Plastic waste and carbon emissions are two of our biggest problems today. Addressing both would be a win for the environment and climate change.

An article in the Asia Pacific Infrastructure magazine’s August-September issue features a plastic road made from 70% recycled plastic from plastic bottles, beer cups, furniture, and cosmetic packaging.

Its first pilot project is the installation of a 30-meter-long bicycle in Zwolle, Netherlands. The project is a collaboration of three companies: an engineering firm, a plastic piping company, and an energy company.

The initiative started in 2018 and has finished its two pilots. It took 1000kg of recycled plastic, equivalent to 218 thousand plastic cups, to make each pilot.

The company is doing continuous testing and improvement to ensure the plastic pavement is strong and durable enough to carry heavy vehicles like garbage trucks and maintenance vehicles.

The plastic pavement can be used as parking lots at this stage, and the first pilot for this is underway, according to the article.

Some of the features of the plastic roads include:

• It uses a prefabricated and lightweight modular piece like a Lego, which makes it easy and quick to install, taking just a few days and with fewer community disruptions compared to traditional road construction methods. 
• It cuts carbon emissions between 50 and 70% compared to conventional roads made of asphalt or concrete, with the possibility of cutting more emissions when industrial production begins in 2021.
• Producing plastic roads also significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to traditional road construction.
• It has a hollow space beneath the surface that can cater to utility services like pipelines, internet cables, and water storage to mitigate flooding in heavy and prolonged rainfall, making this a climate-adaptive infrastructure.
• Applies a circular economy, which is a system that optimises the use of materials and returns them to the system at the end of their useful life, thus preventing waste. It’s the opposite of the consumerist culture, where materials are made, used, and then disposed to allow for the purchase of new goods (Rouse, M. 2020).

PHOTO CREDIT: By Maksym Kozlenko – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72442428