Plastic waste is increasing day by day throughout the world. Where proper garbage collection system is not available, it creates a threat to the environment this polluting it to a greater extent. A large amount of plastic wastes are discarded which leads to the contamination of environment and air.
The large volume of materials required for infrastructure construction is potentially considered to be a major area for the reuse of waste materials. Recycling the plastics has many advantages since it is widely used worldwide and has a long service life, which means that the waste is being removed from the waste stream for a long period.
On the occasion of World Environment Day 2022, students of Heritage Institute of Technology from Department of Chemical Engineering had made a project where they had invented a technology to produce highly efficient and low-cost plastic blocks from waste plastics which have significant advantage over traditional bricks. This will not only reduce plastics waste but would save our environment and soil.
The cost of producing such plastic block is nearly 30% cheaper as compared to conventional bricks. Moreover, the developed plastic composite bricks are not just stronger and lighter than concrete blocks, but they hold twice the weight threshold of conventional concrete blocks. The plastic act as a binder and make the blocks more robust and less brittle.
“The project is now in the nascent stage but we are studying in depth the feasibility si that it can be successfully implemented. Technology related to this had been discovered but this one will make light weight bricks which is yet to be found in the market,” said Prof. Avijit Ghosh who is guiding the students in this project.
Students involved in the project were Debarghya Mukherjee, Soumyajit Mundu, Saubhik Malik, Ishita Samanta and Sanya Sharma from B. Tech Chemical Engineering.