Paving the way: Rajasthan student builds road using non-biodegradable waste

Through their words and actions, teenagers are trying to express their ecological concerns for the future. Among the numerous such efforts is an initiative taken by Nidhi Kalal, a Class XII student in Rajasthan. Kalal has built a 100-feet road from non-biodegradable waste material within her school premises.
 
This trend started brewing in 2015 when the Central government made it mandatory for builders to include plastic waste among other materials while building roads, keeping Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in mind. Around 100,000 kilometres of roads in at least 11 states have been built by using plastic waste among other materials. A professor of Madurai's Thiagarajar College Of Engineering, Rajagopalan Vasudevan, was the first one to lay down a process of building roads by recycling plastic waste.

 
Kalal’s mother Susheela Kalal says that Kalal always has had a knack for doing something for the environment. Her first eco-friendly task was cleaning a small portion of a polluted river near our house in Dungarpur."
 

When she was in Class VI, Kalal joined Udaipur’s Heritage School and her attempts at doing her bit for the environment started taking a more concrete shape. What followed was active participation in recycling- and tree plantation-drives conducted by the school. As the teenager rewinds, she adds that some problems specific to her cities (Dungarpur, from where she hails and Udaipur, where she is currently studying), also “provided raw materials” for the road. “Udaipur is famous for its marbles. Marble mining in and around the city leaves behind marble slurry that acts as a soil pollutant. I thought of doing something to mitigate this problem.”

 
Guidance came in the form of her teacher-mentor Mamata Lodha. Many sessions of research and brainstorming helped the student-teacher duo in figuring out a way to use marble slurry productively.
 
Constructing the road
 
After months of research, came the part to implement the learnings for creating a palpable area of impact. The area of impact, in this case, was roads — designing better and more pothole-resistant roads by using waste materials. A small mud pathway was picked near the school garden to build the road. Plastic waste materials such as empty bottles, packets of chips, cartons were collected over a span of time.

 
Fly ash, dye-containing water, marble slurry and small bits of plastic were used to build the road. Kalal says: “During the trial runs, we figured these materials won't give us the tenacity and durability. A layer of concrete was topped with sand which was further topped with a mixture of fly ash, marble slurry, plastic, and dye-containing water. This was topped with a layer of coal tar and asphalt. Asphalt was used as the final layer of the road to make the end product robust.”
 
“Using molten plastic to build roads is a common practice globally. The mix used to build the 100 feet-long-road will help us tackle the problem of marble slurry which is unique to Udaipur. Reports suggest that polymer roads are surprisingly durable and have gained support among policymakers and scientists in India.”

 
Recognition and patent
 
According to Nidhi, after the road was paved in October, they still had had to test its durability. “A road-roller is being used to on that patch to asses that. The road has been named Green Path and what began as creating “dump yard for waste”, is now a full-fledged road. Using non-biodegradable waste material to construct the road will help in bringing down the cost involved in building and will be a positive step towards saving the environment.”
 
Heritage School Headmistress Tulsi Bhatia says: “The project has been proposed to Ministry of Highways. The ministry has acknowledged the efforts and further research is going on around this. We have also sent the project to The Organisation of Patents in New Delhi.”

 
What next?
 
After she is done with her Class XII boards, Kalal aims to begin two other projects: Scaling up the Green Path initiative for which she has sought the permission of the Dungarpur Municipal Corporation chairman. She also plans on launching a river clean-up drive in Dungarpur to restore its marine ecosystem.