Plastic Bituminous Roads: A Sustainable Technology – For Better Handling Distresses

Abstract

The present era, in particular, the last 3 to 4 decades can be easily named the “Plastic Age” and dealing with plastic waste has always been a challenging affair for Urban local bodies. Plastic roads are bituminous roads or pavement that have a waste plastic blended mix for their wearing courses. Plastic bituminous roads being a sustainable technology are becoming very popular nowadays as a substitute for conventional bituminous roads in India and other parts of the World. Evaluation of pavement is important to plan its maintenance strategy timely to avoid the complete deterioration of the pavement. In the present study, plastic bituminous roads and normal bituminous roads are evaluated for their various distress parameters and are compared based on distress parameters over the years. This paper tries to answer a basic question of whether Plastic Bituminous Roads are definitely sustainable but are they also better in handling the distresses. The study has also revealed that plastic bituminous roads perform better in early deterioration as compared to normal bituminous roads which will encourage field professionals and Urban Local bodies to use this sustainable technology.