Mumbai generates nearly 7,500 tonnes of waste every day, of which nearly 9 per cent is plastic waste. The Indian Beauty and Hygiene Association (IBHA) undertook a zero waste sachet recycling pilot project and succeeded in collecting 600 kg of sachet waste last year. The same is to be turned into oil and carbon.
IBHA is a national trade association comprising of companies in the cosmetics and personal care sector such as P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Wipro, Godrej, Marico, Hindustan Unilever, L’Oreal India, among others.
Speaking to BusinessLine , Dinesh Dayal, President, IBHA, said as an industry, “we have decided to highlight the fact that flexi layer plastic such as sachets, chips packets can be recycled and do not need to be banned completely, or dumped in Mulund or Deonar (Mumbai suburbs).”
The BMC’s Environment Status Report for 2013-14 had shown that plastic accounted for around 675 tonnes of the city’s total daily waste. The first of its kind in the country, the cosmetic industry has been looking at ways to reduce its carbon footprint and tackle the menace of plastic sachet waste. In alignment with the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan movement’, IBHA decided to look at sustainable and innovative solutions to recycle flexi plastic waste.
SMS tie-upIn 2014, IBHA tied up with ‘Stree Mukti Sanghatana’ (SMS), an organisation that works actively with women rag pickers and the BMC. The project incentivised rag pickers to collect multi-layer flexible plastic waste such as sachets and food packets, which was then sent for recycling.
Under IBHA’s Parisar Vikas Waste Management Programme, 200 rag pickers are currently involved in the project. Of the 26 wards in Mumbai, SMS started the collection in 13 wards covering 235 housing colonies, 12 colleges, 10 hotels and nine banks.
As Dayal pointed out: “We are planning to replicate this in other metros.” While the All India Plastic Manufacturers Association has supported the project, it has proposed Ampolt Electronics, a Bengaluru-based company, to help recycle the collected waste.
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Published on April 12, 2015
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