Cover Story Tackling plastic waste: India shows the way By Sudip Talukdar The plastic industry should reimagine itself By Rajendra Shende Swachh Bharat: A silent revolution By Lekshmi Parameswaran

Government organizations, NGOs and startups in India are tackling this problem with zeal and innovation. For instance, plastic waste has helped build 1,00,000 km of roads across 11 states; roads impervious to damage and with a long life, ever since the Un

There could not have been a more alarming sight than stark images of tens of thousands of discarded plastic bottles, wrappers, cups and bags of all shapes and sizes, cluttering the world’s beaches, highways, rail lines, public spaces, open fields, lakes and rivers. The omnipresent eyesore is not only an affront to Mother Earth, reflecting unbridled human profligacy, but is also probably the gravest threat to its eco-system, so painstakingly crafted over eons.

The sheer volume of waste boggles the imagination. A million bottles flew off the shelves every minute in 2018, adding up to a staggering sale of 480 billion bottles worldwide, over the whole year, just double the numbers bought in 2009, according to Euromonitor International. The huge quantity would form a mountainous pile as high as two Burj Khalifas, the world’s tallest structure in Dubai, placed on top of each other. Also known as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottle, it was patented in 1973 by US chemist Nathaniel Wyeth and recycled for the first time in 1977.

Of the total global output of 380 million tonnes of plastic in 2015, about half or 55%, meant for single-use, landed in the dump-yard, a fourth was burnt and only a fifth went into recycling, according to the findings published by the Journal of Science Advances. However, of the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic produced globally in the 65 years between 1950 and 2015, only six percent of could be recycled, according to the Journal.

Nearer home, the very recent removal of 52 kg of plastic waste from the belly of a cow in Tamil Nadu is an extreme example of the environmental havoc wrought by the material. Countless cows in India have reportedly died after ingesting 10 to 20 kilos each of such waste, which has come to light during autopsies. Marine life is even more endangered with five trillion pieces of plastic already floating in seas and oceans, killing grey whales and seal pups, birds, fishes, turtles, according to the latest findings. Their cumulative weight is likely to exceed the weight of all the oceans’ fishes by 2050.

However, not all seems to be lost. Government organizations, NGOs and start-ups in India are tackling this problem with zeal and innovation. For instance, plastic waste has helped build 1,00,000 km of roads across 11 states; roads impervious to damage and with a long life, ever since the Union government made use of plastic waste mandatory for road construction in 2015, under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Prof Rajagopalan Vasudevan, from the Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, pioneered its use in 2006, generating interest as far afield as Japan and China.

Prof Vasudevan told a news channel that the road he had constructed in 2002 with plastic waste is still smooth, without a single pothole or a crack even after 15 years. Potholes accounted for a tenth of deaths in 2017 road accidents. The professor pointed out that carry bags, chocolate, biscuit, pan masala and snack wrappings, which usually escape the scrutiny of environmentalists, are not amenable to recycling, but can be profitably used in road construction, substantially improving their quality and durability. Such roads are also cheaper to build and prevent water logging.

One tonne of plastic waste is sufficient for a single layer of road laying for one kilometre. India requires 100,000 tonnes of this waste material to substantially improve its entire road network, arguably the second largest in the world, according to the professor, fondly known as the ‘Plastic Man of India.’ A report by the World Economic Forum noted that such roads are resistant to extreme weather conditions like floods and heat as compared to the conventional ones and very cost-effective.

Since 2011, Chennai has constructed more than 1,000 km of roads with 1,600 tonnes of plastic waste. Similarly, Madhya Pradesh has used plastic waste from 2014, to construct 35 km of roads in 17 districts. In Jamshedpur, Jharkhand a subsidiary company of Tata Steel has built a 12 to 15 km stretch with such waste and several other short stretches in neighbouring towns. Pune has experimented with a mix of bitumen and plastic waste to construct a number of stretches in various parts of the city.

Municipal corporations are tasked with collecting plastic waste for road building. The lot is cleaned to remove contaminants

like paper, oil, grease, food particles, dried, shredded and heated at 165°c and added to the preheated bitumen. “Depending on the quality of tar, a 10 to 30% of it is replaced with the waste plastic. Since both, tar and plastic are petroleum products they gel well together,” said Asad Warsi, the Indore based Swachh Bharat Mission consultant. Twice voted Indian’s cleanest city, Indore, in Madhya Pradesh, has constructed a 45 km stretch with five tonnes of plastic waste.

Other breakthroughs have also been reported. In 2014, the Doon based Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), a unit of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), pioneered the technique of converting a kilo of plastic waste into 750 ml of sulphur-less automotive fuel, good enough to fulfil Euro-III norms. IIP said it would help increase fuel average by two more km per litre. The technique took the IIP nearly 10 years to develop before making it viable for commercial use.

“The fuel obtained from conversion of plastic is completely environmentally friendly due to the absence of any toxic substances. Apart from producing petroleum and diesel, this technology will also ensure that urban and semi-urban areas become plastic-free, as instead of disposing plastics as waste, they can be converted to fuel,” said Dr. Anjan Ray, director, IPR.

A start-up in Maharashtra is converting plastic waste into fuel with the help of thermo-catalytic depolymerization, a simple, low-cost technology, bypassing the requirement of an elaborate infrastructure or a lab. The product is suitable for boilers, furnaces and stoves, in agricultural plants.

Both Medha Tadpatrikar and Shirish Phadtare co-founded the start-up Rudra Environmental Solutions in 2010, with two small plants in Pune, after being appalled by the sight of a couple of deer carcasses, on a visit to Thane, which had apparently died of consuming plastic bags.

“Plastic is basically made from crude oil. So we thought of reversing the process and obtaining fuel from it,” said Medha. Beginning from scratch, but with a background in law and marketing, they burnt the midnight oil to design a machine, which suffered from initial glitches, especially the emission of gases during the heating of plastic. It took them three attempts to tweak the mechanism and utilize these gasses in firing up the plant.

The start-up team collects discarded plastic from 15,000 Pune households at fixed intervals, in recycled bags provided by them. Out of every tonne of plastic, Rudra produces 600 litres of fuel of high calorific value, 20 to 25% of synthetic gases, with five to 10% of polymer-rich sludge, which local builders mix with bitumen to construct smooth roads within residential societies. Goa has also set up two plants under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, functional since 2016, to convert 66 tonnes of waste plastic into fuel.

On the other hand, Roshan Baid, a graduate of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), hit upon the idea of converting recycled plastic into yarns, as a more sustainable alternative to polyester in 2016, after being upset by mounds of plastic waste festering in cities, oceans, river and lakes. He accordingly set up Alcis Sports in 2017, a sub-unit of Paragon Apparels that he had founded in 1997, one which produced sportswear for global brands Reebok and Adidas.

Baid has planned to make 90% of the apparels with plastic yarns. “It’s an attractive idea for a country that produces loads of plastic waste and banning it hasn’t been very effective,” Baid said. “There are places that recycle plastic, but those are for crude uses in industries. Making garments out of plastic requires much finer yarn,” he added.

Sports apparels rely on polyester, a synthetic fibre which consumes huge amounts of water, chemicals and fossil fuels during production, besides leaving residues and toxic by-products. Conversely, garments woven out of recycled plastic yarns are green and safe, slash carbon emissions by 54%, cut energy consumption by half; besides saving 27 litres of water per piece, while performing better than virgin polyester, Baid informed.

Similarly, when thousands of plastic bottles, carelessly strewn all over the venue of an annual food and shopping mela greeted Atiya Rakyan, the CEO of Raw Pressary, which had organized the event two years ago, she determined to convert such waste into yarns, after considering several options. The Pressary, a Nashik based food and beverages startup, collected some 1.2 million plastic bottles and turned them into fabric, launching 1,500 T-shirts in the market this year, according to reports.

In 2014, the Doon based Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), a unit of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), pioneered the technique of converting a kilo of plastic waste into 750 ml of sulphurless automotive fuel, good enough to fulfil Euro-III norms. IIP said it would help increase fuel average by two more km per litre