MILAN – The alternative to tarmac? Recycled plastic. This is the idea conceived in Rotterdam by Volker Wessels, a Dutch construction company who have decided to launch a new green project: recycling plastic on a big scale to create material suitable for substituting tarmac. Functional and revolutionary, the new road surfacing material will have a more lightweight design, reduced construction time, be more durable and have virtually no need for maintenance.
Promoting ecology
In a green project to preserve the environment, Plastic Road provides road surfacing made of 100% recycled material as a sustainable alternative to asphalt. This innovation offers numerous advantages over conventional road surfaces, both in terms of construction and maintenance. Plastic is in fact considered to be more sustainable and easier to use than tarmac. In full compliance with prescriptions for ecological impact, Plastic Road will considerably reduce the 1.6 million tonnes of global CO2 emissions, becoming a substitute for tarmac made from tar and bitumen.
Prefabricated for assembly
Plastic Road proposes modular structures for road construction which can be assembled in a factory and transported to the installation site, reducing the time required for the actual roadwork. The structure is designed to allow space for laying cables and pipes and to permit rainwater to drain away. Moreover, the wear and tear which road surfaces suffer over time as a result of physico-chemical agents and changes in climate could be very largely brought under control. This is because Plastic Road can take both high temperatures of up to 80 degrees and temperatures as low as 40 degrees, with a resistance to corrosion which results in it being up to three times more reliable than tarmac.
The company is looking for a partner
For now, Plastic Road is just an idea on paper. The next phase will be to move on to construction and laboratory tests to ensure that each structure is really as safe as it is believed to be. The company is on the lookout for partners and manufacturers in the plastic materials sector seeking to collaborate on the pilot project and bring Plastic Road into being.
by editorial staff
