2021 Eco Excellence Awards

BUILD Eco Excellence Awards 2021 4 Nov21375 EO, Christie Raptaki founded Roadfill in 2017, and she has since been actively working on innovative projects focusing on alternative uses for waste plastic. Her self-starter approach has remained a key catalyst for the growth and transformation of Roadfill, and the company has become a leading name in innovative road materials, products and road surfacing. Roadfill works with local highway authorities and councils to repair damaged roads using recycled plastic waste. Plastic waste is at an epidemic level throughout the world, and the upkeep and creation of new roads relies solely upon heavy use of fossil fuels. Roadfill is in a unique position to utilise recycled plastic waste products in order to contribute to a reduction in landfill, effectively decreasing plastic waste which in turn reduces our carbon footprint and reliance on fossil fuels. Its ultimate aim is to provide a greener alternative to existing road maintenance and design. Almost any road that you have used in recent times has been laid with bitumen which has had a polymer mix added to it, however Roadfill’s product, Roadworx®, where recycled plastic previously destined for landfill sites is added to a mixture of asphalt, means the amount of bitumen needed is significantly reduced. It allows for greater elasticity of the road surface, reducing the formation of cracks and potholes which are a major hazard to the safety of road users and incur financial costs. Our roads are a vital asset, worth in the region of £465 billion and they support all aspects of our daily work and home lives. The surface of the average road is no more than 0.8cm thick, which quickly leads to fatigue and wear and tear. Roadworx® is more durable and reliable than traditional asphalt usage and ultimately cheaper to local authority budgets. To also help local authorities, Roadfill is currently developing an application for both Android and iOS which maps road surface conditions in real-time data. This will allow local government authorities, transport companies and insurance companies to gather data of road surface conditions such as potholes, cracking and rutting. Not only can plastic be used in road repairs, but also to make road Roadfill is a pioneer in using plastic waste in an environmentally-friendly and innovative way to repair roads and solve the problem of plastic waste, reducing landfill waste and CO2 emissions, and saving substantial sums of money for government and local authority highway budgets. C Most Innovative Road Repair Solutions – London markings. The issue for the companies that make the mixture for road paint is that it needs to be hard wearing and long lasting, as potentially millions to billions of vehicles are going to drive over it and it needs to stay on the road without damaging the vehicle’s tyres. Plastic is great at this, and it has been difficult to find alternative materials that can do the job as effectively. Plastic also allows the manufacturers to easily dye the paint, which other materials that could replace the plastic are not very good at. Being able to produce the road paint is vital, as all drivers know, different colour lines and markings mean different things. The other major culprit of microplastic production from roads is microplastic shed from synthetic tyres. Some people may not know that most tyres used on the roads today are made from a synthetic material that includes plastic. As tyres drive over the road surface, friction causes them to wear and shed microplastic onto the road. It is estimated that tyres shed roughly 1kg of microplastics over their lifespan and it was reported in a 2017 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health that roughly 5-10% of the microplastics currently in the world’s oceans are from tyre wear and tear. When tyres shed onto the road, these microplastics are transported by the wind and rain into the surrounding environments. More research needs to be done into how to tackle the microplastic issues in the road network and this is one of the research avenues that Roadfill will be undertaking in the next few years. Roadfill is continuously looking into ways of making the environment more balanced and contributing to a healthier world. It is currently working closely with a European partner in environmental technologies by harnessing an abundant natural micro porous mineral, which when added to Roadworx®, will have the potential to absorb harmful pollutants from vehicle emissions. This will make road repairs and newly laid road dressings a “living road”. The scope of applying its unique Roadworx® product at and near inner city school playgrounds, tube stations, airports, hospitals, and congested shopping streets such as Oxford Street in London, are a new and highly innovative way of minimising impact of damage to the environment and underpins Roadfill’s aim to produce greener, cleaner and safer roads. Company: Roadfill Email: [email protected] Website: www.roadfill.co.uk