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One of the most difficult problems we face today as a global community is the deadly menace of plastics and their difficulty to recycle. It is clear there has been some advancement in the awareness around this issue over the past few decades, and methods of recycling plastics have improved. However,  it is true that we still send most of our plastics to landfill or they end up at sea, killing marine wildlife and damaging the fragile ecosystems of the planet.

Despite this gloomy news, there is a silver lining – a possible solution. Many different governments around the world, including India and the UK, have been experimenting with the use of plastics in the construction of new roads. The ‘plastic road’ aims to combine traditional asphalt concrete with shredded pieces of plastic which replace traditional ballast as aggregate. As it stands there are currently two types of plastic road, a modular, hollow and prefabricated product and an asphalt mix with plastic waste incorporated into the mixture.

The plastic roads offer a number of advantages over traditional methods, including lasting much longer and being far more durable, reducing the number of potholes and maintenance bills to councils and governments and therefore reducing the number of vehicle accidents and incidents on the roads. The other great advantage is the overall reduction of plastics being sent to landfill, reducing their potential of poisoning watercourses or harming wildlife.

By December 2019, India had built over 21,000 miles of roads using plastic waste and it was estimated for every 1km of ‘plastic road’ there were one million plastic bags recycled rather than sent to landfill. In the UK, 8 different councils have built ‘plastic roads’ where between 3-10kg of plastic waste were recycled for each ton of asphalt used.

At North East Quick Skip, we aim to explore such possibilities to replicate the above idea and to work with the Victorian Government to help introduce a plastic road initiative and secure a contract to help produce Australia’s first plastic road. If you would like to follow our story, be sure to check our Facebook and Instagram pages for updates.