Alemtsehay, Gebremeskel (PhD)Gizalem, Derege2020-03-052023-11-282020-03-052023-11-282019-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/20874The rapid increase in the use of plastic materials in the recent years led to the accumulation of extreme amounts of plastic waste. Thermoplastics such as PET, PE, PP, PS and PVC as well as materials that derived from these are the type of plastic most used and consequently create environmental problems. Landfill, incineration and recycling remains the primary options for solid waste management. One critical determinant of the acceptability of these options is the different health risks associated with each. The plastic waste that burnt and dumped in landfill sites can be recycled and used for different purpose. This includes the use of waste plastic in construction of asphalt road. By recycling waste plastic, it is possible to protect the environment from contamination. Using waste plastic in asphalt road construction as an aggregate binder is one of the recent plastic waste approach. This will help us to avoid the environmental pollution from open-air burning and landfill of plastic waste. In this research the applicability of the waste plastic as a binder, together with Bitumen has investigated, for this purpose, the plastic (Polyethylene terephthalate ) and bitumen mix was checked for certain quality that needed to be a good binder. The natural bitumen had modified by adding Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) in different percentage by weight of bitumen. The tests that conducted on the modified bitumen quality are Ductility, Penetration, and Softening point of the plastic modified bitumen mix. Also the load bearing capacity of the modified bitumen asphalt (aggregate with modified bitumen mix), had been tested. The research had conducted the two methods of asphalt road making using plastic waste. After doing the quality test, the research identified what percentage by weight of plastic that should be mixed with bitumen to give a good quality of modified bitumen, accordingly 8% by weight in wet process and around 16% by weight of Polyethylene Terephthalate(PET) in dry process were able to give good binding property. This can enable us to recycle around 52.4 tons of PET waste (per kilometer of road) that would have gone to landfill and/or to open air burning and Incineration.en-USPlastic WastePlastic Waste DisposalEco-FriendlyRoad ConstructionThesis