Plastic Waste Bituminous Concrete for a Sustainable Waste Management Approach

Bituminous Concrete (BC) is a designed, dense graded mix used as a wearing course according to IRC 27 2009 and IRC 111 2009. Although mostly, BC Grading-1 is used as a binder course & BC Grading-2 is used as a wearing course. BC is a composite material commonly used for the purpose of road surfacing, parking lots, airports, etc. Now a day, waste plastic disposal is an issue of major concern worldwide because plastic does not decay and hence results of an increase in volume. Use of these plastic wastes in an effective manner is become only the solution to overcome the problems arises due to waste plastics. This alternative to bitumen not only reduces the quantity of waste plastics but also conserves both materials and energy and provides a comparatively simpler way to make a considerable reduction in the overall volume of waste plastic. This research paper presents an experiment conducted to study the change in BC mix behavior modified with waste polythene. As per IRC Code, modification was taken place for the preparation of mixes. Marshall properties such as stability, flow value, unit weight, air voids are used to determine optimum polythene content for the given grade of bitumen (80/100). It is concluded from this study that effective use of waste plastic to bituminous mix improves the Marshall properties of the mix to obtain an environment friendly bituminous concrete.