Green Soil Stabilisation:  Harnessing Microbes from Fermented Vegetables and PET Bottle Plastics Waste as Reinforcement

This research focused on the integration of biological and mechanical grouting methods in soil stabilization. In this research, soil reinforcement was achieved using a bio-mediated technique involving microbes derived from vegetable waste, along with the incorporation of PET strips sourced from plastic bottle waste. The silty sand types of soil treated with 15 wt.% of fermented vegetable liquid (vege-grout) were mixed with different sizes and percentages of PET plastic waste. After curing for 21 days, the finding shows that 0.75% of PET is the optimum percentage of PET reinforcement with an unconfined compressive strength of 20.80kPa. Increasing higher amount of PET 1 wt.% reduces the shear strength of the soil by 18.75%. The longer size of PET strips exhibited superior strength, providing more effective reinforcement. The result demonstrated that the utilization of vegetable and plastic wastes holds substantial importance from both economic and environmental perspectives in the future.