RIL builds top quality 40 km roads by using 50 tonne end-of-life plastics

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has built 40-km roads by using 50 tonnes post-consumer plastics as a key ingredient at its Nagothane manufacturing division.

This is a part of the conglomerate's sustainability and circularity initiatives. Nagothane is a census town in Raigad district of Maharashtra.

The plastics used in the construction include end-of-life post-consumer plastics, such as multi-layer films used for packaging of wafers, snacks, flimsy polyethylene plastic bags, flexible polyethylene packaging materials used by e-commerce companies, garbage bags, cling wraps and other flexible plastic products.

"The use of end-of-life plastics in road making is a part of our constant endeavour to instill sustainability and circularity concepts in everything we do," said Vipul Shah, Chief Operating Officer at RIL's Petrochemicals Business.

"The roads at Nagothane manufacturing division is a proof of concept that even end-of-life plastics can be utilised in a sustainable manner in creating meaningful and useful assets," he said in a statement.

Most of the plastics for the road construction project was collected from the employees' township where dry and wet garbage is being segregated for the past 12 years.

The construction of the model roads began in May 2019 and was completed in just two months. The Raigad area was lashed by torrential rains last season. Nagothane alone received a record 2,500 mm rainfall.

The newly-built roads were submerged underwater for many days, but there has not been any road erosion. Fully-loaded trucks ply on these roads daily but there has not been a single pothole till date, said the statement.

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