{"id":12003,"date":"2014-08-16T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-16T15:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=12003"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:13:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:13:34","slug":"professor-of-chemistry-turns-indias-plastic-trash-into-useable-roadways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/professor-of-chemistry-turns-indias-plastic-trash-into-useable-roadways","title":{"rendered":"Professor of Chemistry Turns India\u2019s Plastic Trash into Useable Roadways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christina Sarich \u2014 Nation of Change<br \/>\n<br \/> Scenes from the movie <em><a href=\"http:\/\/observers.france24.com\/files\/images\/090203%20dharavi%20T2.jpg\">Slumdog Millionaire<\/a> <\/em>accurately depict India\u2019s latest consumer-influenced economy. Tree groves are littered with a rainbow color of plastic bags like some kind of ominous carnival wreckage. Plastic bottles, candy wrappers, and other \u2018garbage\u2019 liters the streets in a land where city officials have long forsaken their duties of providing a pristine infrastructure to its inhabitants, but a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/articles\/2014-07-10\/indias-plastic-man-chemist-turns-litter-into-paved-roads\">professor of chemistry<\/a> in Madurai, India thinks that the trash lining his country\u2019s roads and fields could be utilized as a \u2018wonderful resource,\u201d transforming common plastic liter, from thicker acrylics to bottles and grocery bags, into a substitute for bitumen in asphalt.<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018Plastic Man,\u2019 as Rajagopalan Vasudevan is known in India, travels throughout the country instructing engineers how to apply his technology to recycle the trash copiously littering streets from Punjab to Tamil Nadu. To date, more than 3000 miles of plastic roads have been laid in at least 11 states.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationofchange.org\/professor-chemistry-turns-india-s-plastic-trash-useable-roadways-1406089132\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christina Sarich \u2014 Nation of Change Scenes from the movie Slumdog Millionaire accurately depict India\u2019s latest consumer-influenced economy. Tree groves are littered with a rainbow color of plastic bags like some kind of ominous carnival wreckage. Plastic bottles, candy wrappers, and other \u2018garbage\u2019 liters the streets in a land where city officials have long forsaken [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1522,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-innovation","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46925,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12003\/revisions\/46925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}