Recycled plastic is on the road to sustainability

Pregnant with her first child, Raptaki drove into a pothole with such force that it caused her water to break. Mother and child were fine, but the incident was the catalyst in 2017 for the development of Roadworx, a bitumen substitute made from recycled plastics and, latterly, graphene.

According to the Institute of Physics, plastic waste increases the penetration value (a measure of hardness or consistency of bituminous material), softening point and viscosity of bitumen.

“Plastics in roads is not new,” said Raptaki. “What I’m trying to do is to use plastics that are not easily used by another recycling process. If we talk about a circular economy, we need to think wider.”

She continued: “Glass was a very good alternative solution, some years ago, on asphalt; it works perfectly well, it has great results. The reason we don’t use glass…in asphalt is because glass has 100 per cent absorption on the recycling circle.”