On December 28 our Costa Rican concession Ruta 27, announced an important sustainable milestone together with Pedregal company, by presenting its joint project to transform non-recoverable plastic into raw material for asphalt.
Innovation and sustainability in this alliance between Ruta 27 and Pedregal, a company dedicated to construction. Thus, the plastics collected by the maintenance crews of our concession during the cleaning tasks are transformed into RESIN8, a product developed by Pedregal together with CRDC Global.
This product is then dosed as one more aggregate in the asphalt mixture, thus guaranteeing its complete integration into it. The design of this mixture is also suitable for high-traffic roads, which is a guarantee for the greater durability of the road.
The alliance between Pedregal and Ruta 27 has begun with tests at kilometer 65 of Ruta 27, for which 472 tons of asphalt mixture were placed with dosages between 1 and 3% of RESIN8. Or what is the same, a total amount of 716 kg of RESIN8 equivalent to the plastic needed to produce 57,000 bottles.
For Borja Santamaría, General Director of Ruta 27: “Ruta 27 is a socially responsible company with a strong complement of innovation in its DNA. We focus on finding solutions to problems and in this sense, Pedregal becomes a strategic partner by making possible the transformation of plastic into raw material for asphalt. In this way we attend to the maintenance of the road, with the expected standard and at the same time protecting the environment”.
Also David Zamora Commercial Director of Grupo Pedregal and Co-Developer of RESIN8 technology, together with CRDC highlights that “this project marks a historic milestone in the country and in the world in terms of the development of an asphalt pavement with plastic content in road infrastructure projects and it is a circular economy model that allows an adequate disposal of non-recoverable waste through the creation of value products, helping to build cities that are more resilient to climate change”.
With this pilot project, Ruta 27 takes another step to advance towards a circular economy model that helps build infrastructures that are resilient to climate change.
We tell you more about this project in the following video!