Indian Oil aims at plastic neutrality, uses single-use plastic waste to build road

In an effort to effectively utilise single-use plastic waste, the Indian Oil Research and Development Centre has constructed a 0.85 km of road with different concentrations of plastic waste at Faridabad.

Around 16 million tonnes of waste plastic from single-use carry bags and packaging film waste were used for the construction. The road laid out has the maximum percentage of waste plastic used for paving bituminous roads in India.

According to the R&D Centre, waste plastic roads have advantages of higher strength, increased durability, lesser rainwater seepage and lesser potholes.

"While there have been previous efforts, the concentration of plastic was only 0.8 percent. The bituminous road laid by Indian Oil has a concentration of up to 3 percent of single-use plastic," said Dr SSV Ramakumar, Director, R&D Centre, Indian Oil.

Using single-use plastic would also help reduce the cost of road construction by Rs 2 lakh for each kilometre of road constructed, Rajkumar added.

To develop a sustainable business model, Indian Oil also released a National Expression of Interest (EoI) on October 2. This will asses the market viability and willingness of aggregators to supply different types of waste plastics on a consistent basis.

Among other efforts to achieve plastic neutrality, the R&D Centre designed a special grade of bitumen CRMB55 using 2 percent of single-use waste plastic. The centre flagged off the first supply of CRMB55 from Panipat.

The R&D Center is also working on generating BS-VI compliant fuel from plastic, which it plans to launch by April 2020.