Plastic is a very useful material.
Plastic as a packing material, wonderful.
Plastic as a domestic material,
plastic as electronic gadgets. Everywhere you can
see. So plastic is very important in this day-to-day life,
especially it's a cheap material.
At one stage in 2001, they thought of banning plastic
because the accumulation of plastic is so much, and they are not
able to dispose it, and it clogs the pathway of
the canal, of the drainage system, et cetera.
The stagnation resulted, and because of stagnation, you have
mosquitoes. Like that, the problem multiplies in different ways.
So you must find out a solution for that. That was my aim.
I am Dr. Vasudevan.
I'm a professor in chemistry, and
I develop technology which are useful for common man.
Plastic is non-biodegradable. That's the problem.
But I say, "Why do you bother about it?
Let us try to use it for something else."
See, actually, what is done is you take a stone, heat it to
100 degree,
and the shredded plastic. These shredded plastic, which
are
obtained from our waste plastics only.
Now, this is added over the stone. And the moment you add it,
it gets melted and coat over the stone.
Over that, bitumen is added.
And now mix it and roll it and use it for road
laying. The advantage now here is the plastic that is
coated acts as a binder with the bitumen and the stone.
Normally, we expect 1,000kg load-withstanding
property according to the Marshall stability test.
But this product which has been developed withstands
2,500 kilos, more than twice the strength of the
normal road.
Today, more than one lakh kilometers have been laid in India, and about
11 states are involved.
This was a plastic road which was laid in 2006,
and this is almost more than 10 years old.
And the road is
performing very well. No crack has been found in this development.
It has withstood 10 seasons.
The plastic is not a problem.
It is the garbage culture is a problem. The littering is a problem.
Anybody comes to my room, I give them two chocolates,
and then I just find out what they do.
They take the chocolate, but the paper, they simply crush it and keep
it on my table itself. I have a dustbin there.
They can put this small chase. They are not able to put it in the
dustbin, but keep it on the table. That is our culture.
This is the plastone.
This contains granite stone and plastic.
This is one foot by one foot. This consumes about
two kilos of plastic. So a large amount of
consumption of plastic takes place here.
So when you try to use this as a structural material,
we manufacture more plastic to use
it.
Whenever the chemistry is so much useful,
my interest is how common man can be improved.
So what he needs. So that is the motivation, and thereby, we
have developed many products.
When I started the work, some of the companies in the United States,
they came to know that. They were offering a lot of money.
They want the technology to be given to them.
But I said, "No, we are not giving like that.
I'm giving to my country freely."
Only thing is India has got 41 lakh kilometers, only 1 lakh is laid.
The other roads should be laid. That is motivation for the whole
work.