In September last year, Harsh Mariwala-owned Sharrp Ventures and Re Sustainability, a sustainability solutions provider, signed a joint venture to launch a‘plastics circularity initiative’, with plants in Hyderabad and Raipur. The project aims to produce over 9,000 tonne of high-quality recycled polymers annually by capturing and processing 32,000 tonne of plastic waste, reducing 15,000 tonne of CO2 emissions each year. Garima Sadhwani caught up with Masood Mallick, the MD and group CEO of Re Sustainability, to speak about the future of waste management in India. Edited excerpts from the interview:
On the generation of microplastics during recycling
Sometimes in the name of recycling, we are only increasing environmental problems—whether it’s in terms of energy consumption, resource efficiency, environmental impact, or emissions. Plastic recycling has to be done extremely carefully because it generates microplastics which are difficult to detect because of their small size and are very hazardous for the environment.
While recycling, microplastics are generated in three stages—when you shred the plastic waste, when you change temperatures in extremes, and sometimes even when you polish the recycled plastic to make it look better.
However, what people fail to realise is that microplastics are a pollutant in the wrong place, but in the right place, they are a huge resource. For me, they are raw material which I coalesce (or combine together) through a process called electrostatic agglomeration, and turn them into recyclable plastic again.
Because microplastic is still plastic, it has the same properties and can be used the same way. The only problem is that it’s minute, which we overcome by this process.
On recycling being resource intensive
Recycling to recover resources (in the form of precious metals or microplastics) is resource intensive, for sure. It requires water, energy, power, etc. But the environmental cost of generating these resources is so much more in the first place.
You have to look at resource recovery from a lifecycle approach— not from cradle to grave, but from cradle to cradle. When you generate plastic or mine gold, you’re destroying natural landscapes, digging the earth, cutting down forests, blasting rocks, smelting them, etc. On the other hand, when you go looking for these resources in waste, the concentrations you would find will be small, and in the case of precious metals, you’ll have to purify them too. However, the environmental footprint is much less.
On making plastic infinitely recyclable
When we talk about recycling in the conventional sense, it’s actually the downcycling of plastic. After being recycled, plastic gets downcycled and becomes of very low-grade quality. The high-density polyethylene used in a shampoo bottle, after being recycled, is more often than not used to make buckets or mugs or cheaper plastic items. But it’s possible to make plastic infinitely recyclable, and we want to do that. We’ll be shortly announcing another joint venture in the chemical recycling space to do this in India.
What you essentially do is that after you’ve done mechanical recycling two or three times, you have to run it through a chemical recycling process. This is where you break it down to its basic elements and then combine them again to make plastic.
On the best ways to ensure people’s safety while working with waste
People working in waste management plants should not get in contact with the waste at all. The facility should be designed in a way where you eliminate the potential for hazard by design. There should be layers of protection— which we employ, too, in our facilities—like operating waste with machines, having interlocks that act as fail-safe, and then personal safety equipment like masks, helmets, double doors, ear muffs, etc.
Beyond reuse, reduce, and recycle
The way ahead for waste management is to reimagine and redesign. Before a product is even conceptualised, you need to question if it needs to be made, you have to debate its consumption. Today, products are being designed for obsolescence, but going ahead, you need to ensure that their life span is extended, that they are made to be repaired and refurbished instead of being thrown away.