The Waste-Recovery-Innovation-Challenge an initiative of the United Nations Development Program aims at providing technical and financial support to businesses and organizations promoting innovative solutions to minimize or recover waste.

Under the research category of the Challenge, the Institute of Industrial Research (IIR) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was awarded a research grant that is expected to facilitate research work to investigate the possibilities of using a mixture of plastic and agricultural waste in road construction material (bitumen) to make roads more durable.

The $40,000 project will spur the CSIR-IIR team to pursue research towards the utilization of Palm Kernel Shells (PaKS) and plastic waste into sustainable resources for the construction of pavement.

The key objectives of the project include but not limited to the following:

• Identify a state-of-the-art technology utilizing local materials (coconut shell, palm kernel shell, plastic waste, etc) for pavement construction
• To prepare, characterize and optimize composite consisting of waste PaKS, plastic waste and bitumen
• To experiment the composite material for the construction of a driveway or a parking lot of a selected area
• To develop a guiding document to stimulate industry to take up the technology in order to create a reuse alternative for improperly disposed waste
• To organize training program to transfer technology to road contractors and other

The project duration is for a year and core activities to be performed during the project include Platinum Seal & Core Construction and Pyramid Recycling which will be spearheaded by CSIR – Building and Road Research Institute whose mandate is to promote the conduct of demand-driven and problem based research while providing training and technology transfer that links effectively to the socio-economic development of the country in the area of building, road and transport.

It is expect that the project after the one year period will provide database of all potential local waste products compactible with the technology, make recommendations for innovative composite product from local materials for pavement construction, confirm the feasibility of transferring the technology to industry for use on a commercial and produce a standard guideline document reviewed and approved by an accredited institution.

The team will also propose technology transfer for safe reuse of existing waste materials sustainably.

https://ghanawasteplatform.org
https://www.gh.undp.org/content/ghana/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2019/winners-of-undp_s-waste-recovery-innovation-challenge-unveiled.html