Tata Steel arm to use bitumen technology to build plastic-tar road

JUSCO has already built 12-15 km road and has widened 22 roads using waste plastic; says maintenance cost is nil for first 5 years

Disposal of waste plastic is no longer a problem in the steel city with Jamshedpur Utility and Services Company (JUSCO) using bitumen technology on waste plastic, ranging from polybags to biscuit packets, for constructing roads.

JUSCO, a 100 per cent subsidiary company of Tata Steel which maintains and provides municipal services in Tata command area of the city, has constructed 12-15 kms road in the steel city as well as Tata Steel Works besides widening 22 roads using the environment-friendly technology of utilising waste plastic.

"As far as we know, Jamshedpur is the only city in eastern India where bitumen technology (Dry Process) patented by Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE), Tirupparankuram, Madurai, has been implemented on accumulated waste plastic for the first time", Gaurav Anand, Senior Manager (Quality Assurance) of JUSCO, said today.

Claiming that there is no maintenance cost involved for the first five years, Anand, who is an environment engineer, said that for every stretch of such one km long and four metre wide road, one tonne of bitumen costing Rs 50,000 is saved.

The use of bitumen has been reduced by 7 per cent ever since JUSCO began using waste plastic in road construction work, he said, adding that the quality and longevity of roads made of waste plastic-aggregate-bitumen was two times better than bitumen road.

Describing plastic tar road as a "new pathway", Pratyush Dandpat, Deputy Manager (Quality Assurance) of JUSCO, said that the technology turned out to be successful.

Besides being water resistant, it has better binding property, higher softening point, can withstand high temperature and higher load, has lower penetration value, costs less as compared to bitumen road and has no toxic gas emission, Dandpat said.

Though there is great demand for the technology, including from Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand governments, but "we do not have any plan to commercialise it but to serve society. We have even received a request from Nigeria, which wants to replicate it in their country", Anand said.

Due to the JUSCO initiative, the city will now have strong, durable, eco-friendly roads which will also relieve the residents from the sight of heaps of plastic waste.