POKHARA: Cars speeding along a smooth, black-coloured street in Nepal’s Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction.

Nepal’s urban areas generate about 5,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, according to the World Bank, of which 13 per cent is plastic waste dumped in landfills. While high-value plastics, like bottles, are absorbed by the recycling industry, low-value plastics — such as multi-layered packaging — pose a significant challenge because they don’t fit into a single recycling category.

For a group of young Nepali entrepreneurs, the vast accumulation of this low-value plastic waste presented an opportunity. “A plastic road can use even low-value plastics,” said Bimal Bastola, founder of Green Road Waste Management, the organisation leading the initiative in Nepal.

“We saw scope for such plastics to be utilised as a raw material, partially substituting bitumen in road construction.” Discarded packages of noodles, biscuits and other snacks move along a conveyor belt at their trash-sorting centre. The divided plastic is then put into machines to be shredded into fine pieces.

Since the early 2000s, neighbouring India has been leading the world in building a network of plastic roads, even making the usage of plastic waste mandatory in roads near large cities in 2015.

A growing number of countries are experimenting with it, including nearby Bhutan and Bangladesh. In traditional road construction, bitumen is the binding material, a tarry oil product mixed directly with hot aggregates before paving a road.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2025