This may read like the retelling of a mythical tale in which a hitherto indestructible demon is finally done to death. K. Ahmed Khan, a small-scale industrialist in Bangalore, is successfully plotting the death of plastic waste, by mixing it with bitumen. The new compound is called polymerised bitumen.
Polymerised bitumen by itself is not new; it has been developed with pure plastic and is an expensive affair. But Khan’s innovation is about doing it with plastic waste collected from heaps of Bangalore’s garbage and keeping it cost-effective.
Khan has applied for an international process and product patent to guard his innovation. He says, "Many big companies have approached me, but I want this technology to serve the community." He explains that with the use of the new technology the plastic beast becomes eco-friendly, if not biodegradable.
Bangalore generates about 15 tonnes of plastic everyday, out of which nearly 10 tonnes is used for recycling and the remaining five tonnes is what is left out as waste. It is this remainder, mostly polythene bags and PET bottles, that forms much of the indestructible garbage you see all over India.
Khan has already built 40 km of plastic road in and around Bangalore. A small stretch of it, near Rajarajeswari Nagar in the city, was first inaugurated in April 2002. In principle, the Bangalore Municipal Corporation has agreed to make all its roads plastic, as have similar bodies in Delhi and Calcutta.
These aren’t commitments, of course, but the small stretches of plastic roads that have been under observation for over two years now have been found more durable than regular roads.
Khan originally ran a plastic products firm called KK Polyflex. Around 1995, when the anti-plastic lobby started getting powerful, he began to worry it would hit his business. He decided to make an innovation that would both sustain the plastic industry and also address the concerns of eco-activists.
He arranged for garbage, got some 300 people to segregate plastic waste, built an indigenous dusting and cleaning machine for it and after six years of trial, developed a bitumen that would take plastic and still retain its semi-solid flowing consistency. And his company now calls itself KK Plastic Waste Management.
