Kathmandu – In Pokhara and parts of Kathmandu Valley some roads are now being built with a surprising ingredient, plastic waste.
It is often described as a “plastic road” but the reality is more technical than the phrase suggests. These are conventional asphalt roads where a small proportion of plastic, around 10 percent is mixed into bitumen, the black binding material that holds road surfaces together.
For the team of Green Road Waste Management, NGO based in Pokhara behind the idea, it is a simple intervention with two goals reduce the strain of mounting plastic waste in cities and improve the quality of roads that tend to break down quickly under Nepal’s weather and traffic conditions.
The idea dates back to 2017, Nirajan Ghimire, co-founder told Kathmandupati when working waste management began connecting two visible urban failures overflowing plastic waste and poor-quality roads that required constant maintenance. By 2018, they had already begun pilot work in Pokhara, funding early stretches themselves before municipal support was available.
The timing was not accidental. Nepal’s cities were already struggling with waste. According to UNDP assessments, urban areas generate more than 350 tonnes of plastic waste daily and much of it non-recyclable multilayer packaging. The World Bank has also estimated that Nepal’s urban centres produce around 5,000 tonnes of solid waste every day with plastic forming a significant share.
In cities like Pokhara, that pressure is visible on the ground.
Ghimire highlighted that around 180 tonnes of waste is generated daily including roughly 20 to 25 tonnes of plastic. Much of it ends up in landfills, rivers, or open dumping sites because recycling systems are limited and low-grade plastics are difficult to process.
Against that backdrop using plastic in roads seemed like a practical workaround.
The technology itself is not new, India began experimenting with plastic-modified roads in the early 2000s. Nepal’s team also trained received technical exposure through regional training in Bhutan.
The method is fairly straightforward. Plastic waste mostly snack wrappers, biscuit packets and other multilayer packaging is shredded, heated and coated onto aggregates. Bitumen is then added to form the final asphalt mix.
But even proponents are clear on one point, this is not a road made of plastic. It is a modified road, where plastic replaces only a small portion of conventional materials.
Each kilometre of road uses roughly 2 to 4 tonnes of plastic, according to project estimates. That number sounds significant until placed against the scale of waste generation. In Pokhara alone, daily plastic waste far exceeds what even multiple kilometres of road construction can absorb.
So while the idea helps, it does not meaningfully reduce the city’s waste burden on its own.
So far, the work has remained small in scale about 10 road sections covering roughly 2 kilometres including early projects in Pokhara and later stretches in Kirtipur. The first pilot in Pokhara was fully funded by the NGO behind the initiative with no initial municipal contribution.
For years, progress was slowed by something far less technical than engineering, regulation. Nepal’s Department of Roads did not include plastic-modified asphalt in its standard tender documents which meant municipalities could not formally contract such projects even if they wanted to.
That changed only in 2025 when the technology was finally added to official construction standards after nearly eight years of effort.
Supporters argue the benefits are clear. As Ghimire, co-founder of the initiative puts it, “Normal roads have less life span and it is of poor quality and requires a lot of maintenance. In 20 years, let’s say if plastic road is maintained 3 times, normal road would require 6 times. So if you look at it holistically, you save crores.”
He adds that the economics and durability improve over time.
“The plastic roads have 1.5 to 2 times more life than the normal road. It is cost effective as construction cost is around 1–2% less. If you look at it over time, you save significantly.”
But those claims are still being tested at scale in Nepal and long-term performance data remains limited.
What is clear is the gap between expectation and impact.
Plastic roads are sometimes presented as a dual solution fixing roads while cleaning cities. However. the numbers do not fully support that idea. Even if expanded widely, this approach can only consume a fraction of Nepal’s plastic waste stream.
In that sense, it is less a waste solution and more a diversion mechanism, a way to use some of what cannot be recycled rather than a way to solve the problem itself.
That is why the debate has now shifted beyond engineering and into policy.
The team is pushing for mandatory use of plastic in road construction similar to parts of India where guidelines require a percentage of plastic in certain road projects.
For now, Nepal’s plastic roads are neither a breakthrough nor a failure. They are an experiment operating within limits like useful in patches, constrained by policy and small compared to the scale of the problem they are meant to address.
