PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2019

EDITOUR PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 09/19 www.petpla.net 17 Environment, sustainability and recycling The use of rPET is expected to grow by around 20%. Sufficient quanti- ties of post-consumer PET bottles are available and, although large parts of the country have no infrastructure whatsoever for the disposal, let alone separation of waste, some functional methods for further use have devel- oped over time. The majority of plastic waste currently ends up unsorted in unregulated landfill sites, discarded in the open country, by the roadside or individually incinerated. Some dis- carded waste is collected by self-organ- ised collectors, mostly from the lower social classes, before being taken to collection centres for a small amount of money per kilo. The bottles are sorted there and can be added to the recycling stream. For the collectors this is often their only regular source of income. A proportion of PET bottles is reused for private purposes. Families use them again and again for their own needs by, for example, refilling them with water or tea. Another popular pursuit is for the PET bottles to be filled with petrol before being sold by the roadside or simply emptied into the fuel tank of a motorised two-wheeler and refilled again – a behaviour frequently encountered in Asia, which increases the availability of fuel. While recycling for plastic waste generally is abysmal, that for PET is, by contrast, exception- ally high, at over 85% and therefore leaves quite a few regions in the world far behind. “Producers should take responsibil- ity for collecting and recycling as per EPR laws”, said Mrs Wilma Rodri- gues, Founder & CEO of Saahas Zero Waste, a waste management firm from Bangalore. “PET in India has a formal recycling backend compared to other streams of waste. The economic value is low for other streams of plastic, such as PS and PP, on account of which they most often are dumped or burned. The end destinations and recyclers for other plastics are also far less devel- oped and mostly informal, compared with PET.” Mrs Rodrigues added that a study undertaken by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry said that the plastic processing industry is forecast to grow to 22million tonnes a year by 2020, from 13.4 tonnes in 2015. Nearly half of this growth is in single-use plastic. What does not yet exist is a local bottle-to-bottle system, which means that the PET flakes used for manufac- ture by the recycling companies are not recycled into food or beverage packag- ing, but primarily “downcycled” into the textiles sector. The self-administration by the collectors also affects other recy- clable materials. The proportion of waste that is not sent for recycling cannot be ignored, however. A single glance at the landfill sites, littered rivers or even backyards in conurbations is enough. The govern- ment is attempting to counter this situa- tion with the support of numerous asso- ciations and NGOs. The objective is to achieve a sea change in the attitude of the general public towards the correct handling of waste. The major players in the beverage and plastics process- ing industry, whose products find their way onto the market in large quanti- ties, have been taking an increasing degree of responsibility, conveying important knowledge about the value of used plastic packaging and the rea- sons why discarding waste is bad for the environment. A public awareness campaign of this kind is currently being implemented by preform giant Man- jushree Technopack. The company, which processes some 110,000 tonnes of material in India per year with a PET share of 82%, is currently building its “Reuseum”, a 1,800m 2 complex that includes an education contract, directly adjacent to its plant in Bidadi, Banga- lore. The project, which is to be com- pleted at the end of the year and which has also had input from Coca-Cola, aims to serve as a universal informa- tion platform for all types of recycling, to be accessible to all, and to convey the topic of handling and value creation on an holistic basis with exhibitions, work- shops, lectures, etc. Sources: German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IMF (International Monetary Fund), Market Research Company Euromonitor International, Netscribes, Nielsen, Reliance Industries Limited, Sahaas Zero Waste, Statista, WKO (Aus- trian Economic Chambers), World Bank