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Bengal

Eco-friendly: State to construct road using waste plastic

Eco-friendly: State to construct road using waste plastic
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Kolkata: Beside completing reconstruction of 8,500 km rural roads under Pathashree Avijyan project launched by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the state Panchayats and Rural Development department has taken up the first major project of constructing road using waste plastic under Bangla Gramin Sadak Yojona.

"This is the first time when project to construct 30 km road at a time using waste plastic has been taken up by the department," said a senior official of the state Panchayats and Rural Development department.

The use of waste plastic in constructing roads is not only eco-friendly but also cost effective and its logitivity is more compared to that of normal bitumen roads as it has high water resistance capacity.

The project to construct road using waster plastic has been taken up at Barasat in North 24- Parganas

and in Malda. One 8 km long road will be constructed in Malda for which work order has been issued while two roads of similar length will be constructed at Barasat in North 24-Parganas.

Utilisation of waste plastic in road construction will reduce six to eight per cent use of bitumen for the same. "Bitumen costs around Rs 45 per kg. While shredded plastic costs only Rs 25 per kg. So automatically the project cost will go down," said another state government official.

At the same time it will ensure induction of self help groups (SHGs) in the process as the contractors thise have bagged the project of constructing the roads will procure shredded plastics from SHGs. Use of bitumen further goes down as shredded plastic creates a coating over the layer of stone chips.

"The use of waste plastic is being undertaken as per the code of Indian Road Congress," the official said, adding in coming days more roads would be constructed using waste

plastic. Earlier the state Panchayats and Rural Development department had constructed around 3,000 km road using jute and 5,000 km road using bitumen coldmix.

It may be mentioned that the Chief Minister has launched the Pathashree Avijyan in Jalpaiguri three months ago with a target of reconstructing 12,000 km road. Later more roads were added to the list and the target went up to 16,000 km.

In just three months time, already 8,500 km road has been reconstructed and

the initial target of 12,000 km will be achieved by January 2021. In the past nine years, the Mamata Banerjee government constructed 9 lakh km roads. While only around 3000 km of road was constructed since independence to 2011.

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