india

Updated: Oct 03, 2019 09:18 IST

State-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), country’s largest fuel retailer, plans to establish a robust supply chain of waste single-use plastic to be recycled as road construction material.

The company on Wednesday invited expression of interest (EoI) for procurement of plastic waste for implementing its various initiatives on regular basis and to develop a sustainable business model which comprises of various organised aggregator and non-governmental organisation, the company said in a statement.

The EoI has been released “for assessing the market availability and willingness of parties/aggregators/organisations to supply different types of waste plastics in commercial quantities on consistent basis,” it said.

IOC on Wednesday also launched various initiatives to reuse single use plastic that included construction of a 0.85 km of bituminous road paved with different concentrations of single use waste plastic at Faridabad.

The construction of road by using similar technology has been already implemented by private energy major Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), which is planning to scale-up its initiatives to reuse waste plastic materials. RIL has already established 13 collection centres across the country that collects waste plastic material for the companies various initiatives, including manufacturing fabric.

IOC’s research and development centre has conducted a study and evaluated the effect of shredded waste plastic on bituminous concrete. As per the lab tests, the waste plastic roads have the advantages of higher strength, increased durability, lesser rain water seepage due to plastic in the aggregates, better binding/bonding of mix and lesser stripping with less pot-holes, the statement said. The construction was done using about 16 MT of waste plastic from single use carry bags and packaging film waste, it added.

The public sector firm has also developed a special grade crumb rubber modified bitumen (CRMB55) from waste plastic material. Another product, developed by the company, is soluble bitumen poly bags were polybags for bitumen filling produced from 100% single use waste plastic, which solubilise fully in the bitumen at the time of road paving.

“Bitumen is packed in two layered specially designed poly-bags - one inner liner bag for filling and another outer (raffia) bag with handle for ease of handling. At the user’s end, the outer bag is removed and bitumen along with the inner bags can be charged into the bitumen hot mix plant. During the bitumen melting process at the road construction site, the inner bag melts and completely homogenizes with the bitumen, which can be further used in the same way as conventionally packed bitumen,” the statement said.