Rourkela: Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has adopted an "environment-friendly" road-laying technique. As part of a pilot project, it has used plastic waste in construction of 1km road between Rourkela Club and Shaktinagar Chowk at Sector-II here.

Head of RSP's town engineering department P.K. Sahu said: "This is for the first time in the state that plastic waste has been used for road laying. And, it has been a successful effort." The road has been laid as per the directives of the Indian Road Congress. The Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, also recommends use of waste plastic in construction of roads.

"The method is helpful in taking care of plastic menace. We will implement this method in our future projects subject to availability of plastic material," Sahu added.

The RSP is doing a door-to-door collection of domestic waste. The waste is segregated at various intermediate garbage stations spread across the steel town. It is then collected and transported to a site at Sector-XV constructed solely for this purpose. The plastic waste material is shredded there using the facilities of local recyclers, and transported to hot mix plant. Then it is mixed with the aggregates used for tar concrete. When the aggregate is heated, the plastic gets coated uniformly over the aggregate within 30 seconds to 60 seconds, giving it an oily look. The plastic-waste-coated aggregate is then mixed with hot tar and the resulting mix is used for road construction.

Local contractor Debi Jena said: "Nothing could have been a better gift for the society." Regional officer of Odisha State Pollution Control Board Hemendra Nayak said: "This environment-friendly model should be adopted everywhere while laying road to save us from plastic menace."

The RSP is now carrying out massive road repair jobs in the town using in-house road tar. All plants of the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) have plans to lay more such green roads with waste plastic in the coming months.

"The initiative of using waste plastic in road laying is also a significant step towards Swachh Bharat initiative," said an official of the steel plant.