Recycled plastic, asphalt road holding up in Ewa Beach

EWA BEACH, Hawaii (KHON2) — It has been about 14 months since State crews paved a section of Fort Weaver Road with a mix of asphalt and plastic.

KHON2 wanted to know how the new road is faring after the recent rain caused potholes around the island.

State Rep. David Alcos III lives on Fort Weaver Road, right along where the new road was paved in October, 2022.

“It feels smoother than the regular road,” Rep. Alcos III said. “Seems like the plastics holding it together, making it even much more smoother, like some of the other pavements. If you look, you can see the bumps inside of it. Right now this one, it feels like you can ride a skateboard.”

Transportation officials said most Hawaii roads have been paved with Polymer Mixed Asphalt (PMA) since 2015. A section of Fort Weaver Road has a mixture of PMA and plastic and did not show signs of wear after recent rain.

“No potholes in this area. And we didn’t expect any. Are, when we start combining our neat mix, our normal mix for, with plastic it’s a better binder for everything. We know PMA works really, really well and we know that PMA with plastic is going to work even better,” Hawaii Department of Transportation director Ed Sniffen said.

Sniffen added that testing for microplastics showed no increased leaching.

“One is they submerge it and they they check to see it in a vacuum to see if any of that microplastic leaches out. So they test the water to see any leaching that occurs. And so far, none,” Sniffen said.

Testing for erosion is also looking good, Rep. Alcos III hopes it holds up.

“We had some rain. Right now there’s no cracks or any gouges in the road. The road looks really smooth so far. We’ve got to check it out in five years, ten years and see how it comes out,” Rep. Alcos III said.

Plastic from the mainland was used for the Fort Weaver project, but officials said they are looking at using recycled material straight from Hawaii in local projects — no pun intended — down the road.

“It’s huge! I mean, it’ll be huge,” Sniffen said. “All the plastics that we use right now, if we can turn them into road materials, humongous. We get all of that stuff out of our out of our landfills, out of our out of our H-POWER burning and get it right into our roadways.”

“I see this expanding to more than just pavements,” Sniffen said. “If we can expand this to other industries that provide a better material with waste products that we utilize and get out of our landfills, would be tremendous.”