Sturdier, safer, cheaper: India urged to build more roads with plastic waste Reuters| Updated: Oct 25, 2017, 08.07 PM IST MUMBAI: India should use its biggest investment in road construction to make its roads safer and build them cheaper with a home-grown technology that salvages plastic waste, analysts said. India has the world's second-largest road network and one of the highest numbers of road accidents globally. Official data recorded more than 150,000 deaths from about 500,000 accidents last year. Nearly a tenth of those deaths were caused by accidents involving potholes, which are a common feature of Indian roads. On Tuesday, the government announced an investment of 6.9 trillion rupees ($11 billion) to build 83,677 km (52,000 miles) of roads over the next five years. Analysts called for them to be built with a tested technology using plastic waste, which reduces costs and makes roads more durable and thus safer. "Plastic roads will not only withsta .. Each kilometre of a single-lane tar road can consume one tonne of plastic waste, and the plastic can double or even triple the life of the road, said the economist in a paper published on Wednesday with Almitra Patel, a solid waste management expert. India produces about 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste daily, of which about 9,000 tonnes is recycled. The remainder clutters landfills and clogs drains, and is blamed for urban flooding. A technology developed by Rajagopalan ..