Soil Improvement Using Waste Plastic Bags: A Review Paper

Abstract

Plastic waste is increasing by time that caused huge challenges all over the world. Therefore, there is a need for good ways to solve the environmental challenges. Also, there is another problem which is that many times weak soil faces the projects, the soil needs to be improved. The idea of this paper is to have a thorough review on literature to collect the data on reinforcing soil with waste plastic bags, where the plastic bags strips are reused as a soil stabilizing technique. This solution will be cost effective and eco-friendly and will solve soil weakness problem. This article reviews the works that has been carried out in this issue to find out the functionality of these waste strips as reinforcing material. From this paper the findings were that plastic bags can be used as an effective solution to improve soil strength while being eco-friendly and cost effective. It is noticed that addition of 0-2.5% plastic bags results in getting better property improvements. Regarding the dimensions of the additives it was found that the plastic strips with higher the aspect ratio lead to better test results. Finally, CBR, shear strength parameter and compaction characteristics of stabilized samples were visibly improved comparing to non-stabilized samples.