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Plastic bottles Turns into Construction Materials - Civil Engineering

Innovation and creativity replace the strong, conventional process of the construction for the betterment of the society. The new-age engineers seem to be the flag bearer of this thought. Construction cost is climbing high with time, and to bring a downfall in the expenses, civil engineers are working hard to conceptualize their ideas. Using waste materials remain in the concentration of the engineers so that they can bring comprehensive solutions to the existing problems.

Amid this time of change, eight civil engineers from Adithya Institute of Technology, Coimbatore invent something unheard and unexpected. They turn plastic bottles into construction materials to bring down the construction costs.

Eight engineers – Siva Sankar, K.Ajith, G. Naveen Kumar, Gopi Krishnan, John Sebastian, V.Nachiyappan, S. Sarath Kumar and M. Naveen – take a step ahead of the time and think the way no one did before. They bring out a cheap way of construction with plastic bottles and other waste materials. They execute their thought in reality and earn appreciations from the engineering world.

The idea was so new and interesting that everyone accepted the process as soon as they came in news. K. Vijayakarthikeyan, city municipal commissioner of Coimbatore, crooned the effort of the engineers and offered space near Avinashilingam University to build a toilet which also supports the initiative Swacch Bharat Mission.

They were searching for the substitutes of the traditional build process to introduce an eco-friendly option for the society. They came across that African countries used plastic bottles for the construction. The thought inspired them to repeat the similar approach for their country with affordable options.

The process of making construction materials out of waste products was not easy, though. Like all innovations, it also went through errors and modifications and took time to reach the final stage. The engineers start collecting waste bottles from hostels, wedding reception halls and many other places from the city. Foundry sand has been used as the filler of the bottles to give them the required strength that can replace the use of bricks. The compression tests also qualify the bottles and reveal that they are even stronger than the traditional bricks we generally use for the construction.

The process is still at its nascent stage and needs improvements like mechanized techniques for replacing the manual works. It saves will then saves the time and produces the desired result. Not only does it bring down the construction costs, it also offers an effective solution of recycling water bottles in an eco-friendly way. The idea is potential enough to be accepted by the people across the world.

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