On the completion of a year of New Town’s first ‘plastic road’, there is announcement of three more to be laid using plastic in the township.

“According to the Indian Roads Congress guidelines, waste plastic weighing about six per cent of the weight of the bitumen can be used in the mix for surfacing roads. The plastic has to be cleaned and shredded before use. Since plastic is non biodegradable we are burying it in the road. That reduces the volume to be dumped in landfill sites,” said NKDA chairman Debashis Sen.

Since the presence of plastic reduces percolation of water, the longevity of roads also increases, engineers say.

Street no 674 that uses waste plastic fibre with bitumen mix. It was the first plastic road in New Town laid a year ago Picture by Sudeshna Banerjee

NKDA had chosen a 400m stretch next to City Centre 2 a year ago on an experimental basis. “The idea was to check if it performed well. Now that a year has passed, we have formed an expert committee headed by the chief engineer which has submitted a report to me. According to the report, the road has been performing well with zero complaints. So we have now decided to expand the use of the material to three more roads which have been identified,” Sen added.

Of the three roads chosen to be laid with plastic-bitumen mix, one is the service road along the New Town Mela Ground till Swapna Bhor.

NKDA chief Debashis Sen and other officials inspect Street 329 leading to the State Bank Institute of Leadership in Action Area II Picture by Sudeshna Banerjee

Another is Street 329 leading to the State Bank Institute of Leadership in Action Area II. The third is the stretch from Moonbeam to Akankha. “We have been receiving complaints from residents about the state of the road,” officials said, when The Telegraph Salt Lake accompanied them during the inspection.

Sen left instructions with the engineers that the plastic used in the mix be taken from the trash collected from New Town itself and not acquired from outside.