In India, the story of a highway usually begins with speed and ends with dust. Every year, thousands of kilometers of roads are created, resurfaced, and rebuilt, and all these activities consume huge amounts of bitumen, stone, and sand, and at the same time, they produce large amounts of milled asphalt and construction waste. Along with road construction, plastic waste continues to be dumped in landfills and external pits, and cooking oil and agricultural waste are being disposed of in environmentally damaging ways. The total amount of plastic waste generated in the country is around 9.3 million tonnes every year, with a major part of it still leaking into landfills, unregulated dumpsites, and open burning locations. India’s roads and waste concerns are, quite literally, running side by side.
The question that remains mostly unanswered is simple: Can the waste that chokes our cities and villages become the material that holds our roads together?
For engineer Harshit Sheladiya, the answer was not just yes; it became the central experiment of his career.
Turning an EPC Contractor into a Green Laboratory
During his tenure at a leading Indian infrastructure EPC contractor handling national and state highway projects, Harshit worked across some of the most demanding corridors in the country. The contractor’s mandate was conventional: build and upgrade highways and urban roads to the specifications set by agencies such as NHIDCL, state PWDs, and industrial development corporations.
Harshit joined as a Construction Estimator, usually found behind detailed spreadsheets and tender documents. His early responsibilities were rooted in cost and risk, preparing technical estimates for large road packages and leading value engineering exercises to keep every kilometre financially viable.
But the more projects he worked on, the clearer one pattern became. India’s highway development model was locked into a high-consumption loop, dependence on virgin bitumen, repeated overlays, frequent maintenance, and mounting waste. He began to see his role not just as a cost estimator, but as someone who could rewrite the material logic of how roads were built.
As he progressed to Project Engineer and eventually Project Manager / Consultant, he moved from calculations to full-spectrum project control, overseeing major corridors across Nagaland, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.
It was within this high-stakes environment that he tried something different: using India’s waste as India’s pavement.
The Problem with Old Roads, and a Two-Stream Solution
When old pavement is milled and reused, the aged bitumen in the mix has typically lost its elasticity and adhesion. Without intervention, recycled material cracks early and fails long before its design life. Many contractors default to virgin bitumen, sidelining reuse despite the waste and cost.
Harshit’s response was to design a rejuvenated bitumen binder that combined two categories of waste rarely seen together in mainstream road projects:
- Bio-oil derived from discarded cooking oil and agricultural residues
- Polymerized waste plastic processed into performance-enhancing modifiers
By blending bio-oil with recycled plastic modifiers, he helped restore the flexibility, adhesion, and fatigue resistance of aged bitumen. This process consumed two problematic waste streams. This was not a side experiment; it was deployed on live, high-visibility corridors.
From Trial to Template
One of the first major tests came on a challenging hill corridor in Nagaland, where the rejuvenated binder was used to blend reclaimed asphalt back into the pavement layers. On the ground, it meant less dependence on virgin bitumen, more efficient material use, and a surface that resisted early distress and reduced the need for frequent maintenance.
Instead of remaining a one-off trial, Harshit turned the mix into a repeatable solution by codifying standards, mix designs, and monitoring checks. The contractor then rolled it out across multiple highway packages, transforming a single experiment into a reference practice.
The impact also extended beyond the carriageway. Each new project created demand for segregated waste plastic and suitable bio-waste, giving local micro-enterprises and informal collectors in parts of Nagaland and Gujarat a steady buyer. What began as a materials innovation gradually evolved into a small but meaningful rural livelihood engine.
Beyond One Innovation: A Portfolio of Value-Engineered Roads
The rejuvenated binder was only one part of a broader value-engineering push that Harshit led across the company’s portfolio. Across national and state highway programs, spanning NHIDCL, PWD–NH, GIDC, SUDA, Surat Municipal Corporation, R & B Gujarat, and the National Highways Division (Bharuch), Harshit contributed to various infrastructure projects. These projects were cumulatively valued at over ₹1,200 crore (≈ USD 145 million). His value‑engineering initiatives delivered measurable outcomes across diverse geographies and project categories.
- In Nagaland (2018), on the Pfutsero–Phek Road under NHIDCL, he introduced a rejuvenated bitumen binder created from waste plastic and bio‑oil. This reduced the need for virgin binder by nearly 18%, resulting in ₹25 crore in cost savings and improved pavement performance.
- In Maharashtra (2019), during rehabilitation on NH‑953 under PWD–NH, he deployed cold‑mix plastic‑bitumen technology suitable for hilly, remote stretches. This achieved ₹32 crore in combined energy, transport, and operational savings.
- On the SH‑25 Rajkot–Bhavnagar corridor in Gujarat (2020), his interlocking plastic‑bitumen block pavement system delivered ₹28 crore in reduced maintenance cycles and faster execution.
- At GIDC’s Dahej‑III Industrial Estate (2021), his hybrid design combining rejuvenated binders and modular blocks generated ₹20 crore in life‑cycle cost benefits.
- For SUDA’s BRTS corridor and bus shelters (2021), modular cold‑mix pads enabled 30% faster installation, producing ₹22 crore in delivery efficiencies.
- On Surat Municipal Corporation’s Varachha Zone roads (2021), he implemented sensor‑paver automation and cold‑mix overlays, achieving 15% lower maintenance, equivalent to ₹18 crore in long‑term savings.
Across these efforts, Harshit treated each assignment as a testbed for value-engineered designs that balanced construction efficiency with long-term durability and user comfort.
Changing a Company’s Direction
As the visible successes multiplied, Harshit’s role began to shift from project delivery to strategic influence.
He introduced circular-economy principles into design and procurement, steering the organization toward sustainability-focused engineering that supported everyday commuters and informed both federally and state-funded programs. This strengthened the firm’s position on green-road, smart-city, and industrial-corridor projects, where environmental performance is a key criterion.
Internally, he tracked life-cycle benefits from plastic–bitumen reuse and modular pavements, trained engineers to apply these methods on live sites, and built digital records of cost and performance. He also worked with pollution control and environmental boards for approvals and represented the organization in sustainability forums and client presentations, showing not just what the company built, but how it chose to build differently.
A Different Kind of Road Story
Highways are often discussed in kilometres laid and money spent. Harshit Sheladiya’s work offers another way to tell the story: in plastic diverted from dumps, in waste oil turned into useful inputs, in public funds saved, and in safer, smoother daily journeys.
In a sector where many engineers confine themselves to executing prescribed standards, he carved out an informal role as in-house innovator. He turned an EPC contractor’s project sites into testing grounds for circular, value-engineered infrastructure.
India will continue to build roads. The question is whether those roads will repeat the old cycle of consumption and waste, or whether they will, as in Harshit’s work, begin to quietly clean up the mess already made.