While Zimbabwe battles with rehabilitating its dilapidated road network due to the high cost of tar, neighbouring South Africa has come up with an alternative to the high cost by using recycled material.

Plastic bottles are being recycled to make roads in South Africa, with the hope of helping the country tackle its waste problem and improve the quality of its roads.

Potholes cost the country’s road users an estimated $3.4 billion per year in vehicle repairs and injuries, according to the South African Road Federation, as well as damaging freight.

In August, Shisalanga Construction became the first company in South Africa to lay a section of road that’s partly plastic, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province on the east coast.

It has now repaved half a kilometre stretch of the road in Cliffdale, on the outskirts of Durban, using asphalt made with the equivalent of almost 40,000 recycled two-liter plastic drinks bottles.