Pave the Road

Why is it that a single mother with two toddlers in tow can move to a foreign country, write environmental legislation that reduces fossil fuel consumption, provide a closed-loop solution for single plastic pollution, and politicians do not? Running from a toxic marriage to the jungles of Costa Rica, Mason exquisitely weaves together the complexities of family relationships and science.

Kelly Mason is today’s Erin Brockovich. She moves to Costa Rica and is immediately struck by the road conditions – deadly dust is harming the children and the locals and nothing is being done to assist a health crisis. The film gives a voice to the children, communities and neglected citizens of Costa Rica that have suffered from deadly road dust due to government and private company corruption. Finding two solutions in one, Kelly strategises a way to repair the roads while solving another crisis – the plastic waste problem in Central America. Kelly’s plan is simple – take excess plastic waste and use it to pave the roads.

Despite threats, Kelly interviews government officials, medical experts, and community members. She invests four years of testing waste materials at the National Laboratory at the University of Costa Rica (LANAMME-UCR). Their research leads to the groundbreaking discovery that waste materials can replace fossil fuels when melted back to its’ original structure; creating a better, longer-lasting matrix for asphalt and road construction. It provides a solution for paving the roads affecting the lives and health of the community. Kelly presents these facts to multiple government sectors for approval including the Presidents of the country, ministers, and Congress. The people have had enough: a full-blown protest involving military police breaks out. This cinematic exposé of paralleled stories demonstrates the power of the mother’s roar as Mason teams up with the national laboratory to prove that landfills can be eradicated, and waste materials can replace fossil fuels to create better, longer-lasting roads.

Mason’s ability to convince Congress to approve environmental legislation that mandates the use of waste materials in all road construction projects, triggers the paving of 45 km, protecting the health of thousands of school children, and introduces the “Green Pavement” technology to the world, which replaces fossil fuels with plastic waste. The campaign is driving attention to the lack of waste management in Central America, where plastic waste and other waste materials are leaching into soils, rivers, and oceans contributing to the universal plastic pollution crisis – solving two issues in one.

The scope of storytelling coupled with prodigious advancement by a foreign citizen, single-handedly raising her children in the jungle to solve the two biggest problems faced by humankind today, is a testament to the fierceness of the feminine.