Road works using shredded plastic remains a non-starter in Kochi Corporation despite a government directive that it should be encouraged as a sustainable solution to the issue of plastic refuse.
Information available with the Clean Kerala Company (CKC), the government agency entrusted with the marketing and supply of shredded plastic to the local bodies, indicated that about 27 tonnes of shredded plastic waste remained available at the corporation’s plastic shredding unit at Brahmapuram. An additional five-tonne stock is available at the local body’s unit at Ravipuram, operated by the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (Credai), Kochi.
A government order issued on November 17, 2016, had permitted local bodies to use 10 per cent plastic in at least 10 per cent of road works. Interestingly, officials of the local self-government department said CKC had handed over nearly 40 tonnes of shredded plastic collected from the Kochi Corporation’s shredding units at Brahmapuram and Ravipuram for road works carried out in the nearby local bodies over the past two years.
Asked why the corporation was not using shredded plastic for road works, Mayor Soumini Jain said that her engineering department had said that the use of shredded plastic was not incorporated in the manual for road works prescribed by the Public Works Department. Moreover, the council should also give its nod for use of shredded plastic for road works, she said.
V. K. Minimol, chairperson of the Health Standing Committee of the corporation, recalled that she had given a letter to the superintending engineer of the corporation to use shredded plastic in road works based on the government order. Other local bodies were using the shredded plastic generated in the corporation’s unit at Brahmapuram for road work, she said.
Ajay Ghosh, superintending engineer of the corporation, said that he had officially asked the assistant executive engineers in various zonal offices of the corporation to report on the quantity of shredded plastic required for road work nearly three months ago. “But, I am yet to get a compliance report,” he said.
The official said that road works to the tune of ₹100 crore were being carried out in Kochi Corporation in a financial year.
A circular issued by the chief engineer of the Local-Self Government Department on June 20 last year had directed the executive engineers of three-tier panchayats and superintending engineers of municipalities and corporations to strictly ensure that shredded plastic was used in 20% of . Officials said the corporation could save at least ₹22 by using 1 kg of shredded plastic for 1 kg of bitumen for road laying, which costs around ₹45 per kg.
