Aberdeen council chiefs can speed up road repairs and help save the environment by filling potholes with plastic, a councillor has argued.
Liberal Democrat infrastructure spokesman Steve Delaney has submitted a motion to next Monday’s council meeting, calling for a feasibility study on mixing recycled plastic pellets with asphalt as a way to fill potholes and resurface roads.
He hopes that the compound would prove longer-lasting and more efficient as well as being a way of putting more waste plastic to use.
Last October, Cumbria Country Council announced they would be conducting trials of ‘plastic roads’, following a successful £200,000 resurfacing of the A7 in Carlisle.
The council said that using the recycled plastic material involved the equivalent of off-setting 500,000 plastic bottles and more than 800,000 one-use plastic carrier bags.
Mr Delaney, who represents Kingswells, Sheddocksley and Summerhill, argued that the current backlog of road repairs would take ten years even if the council was pumping £20million a year into the programme.
He added: “This is not just about carrying out repairs cheaper, although there is evidence to suggest it would be cheaper, but also about improving our environmental impact. “