Ideaz

Around 500 billion PET water bottles are discarded annually worldwide and of that 35 billion empty water bottles are discarded in US alone.  The amount of recycling of these bottles done in US is 30%. The rest end up either in landfills or in the Pacific or the Atlantic. Plastics in landfills take approximately 400 years to decompose and plastics that end up in oceans cause serious damage to marine life.

The three major issues being faced in recycling of PET bottles are:

1. Irresponsible behaviour of humans while discarding an empty bottle is that they are never segregated and put in its designated bins.
2. If the first problem is overcome, the biggest problem is the Volume to Weight ratio of the PET bottles is very high and the collection bins will fill up very fast and need to be collected on a daily basis.
3. However, the Transport Vehicle faces the same problem of high Volume to Weight ratio which will lead to high transportation cost. Hence, the recycling process has to start immediately on the Vehicle itself to compact the material to pelletized PET ready for recycling.

The beauty of PET as a material is that it is 100% recyclable. India stands as the World’s largest Recycler of PET bottles. In 2023, the market was around INR 2500-3000 crores and it is expected to rise to INR 8000-10000 crores by the year 2035.

Hence it is proposed that Bins be placed at optimum distances on the road and clearly marked PET BOTTLES ONLY in 3 common languages.  A Truck equipped with the following listed below shall be collecting the PET bottles from the BINS and immediately start the process of conversion to pellets:

1. Built in Alternator coupled to the Truck Engine through a clutch or a dedicated Generator.
2. Tipper and Conveyor for the collected PET bottles from Bins.
3. Shredding Machine.
4. Pelletizing Extruder
5. Bagging and Sealing Machines of the pellets.

The Business plan here is to offer franchise rights to different Operators working in their assigned zones/localities. What is being offered is the Idea and the Technology. The investment is by the Operators and a One Time Fees for the services. It is quite possible that the Operators can form a consortium and monopolize. Hence, it would be better if State & Central Governments act as regulators. Whatever be the outcome, service to society would have been done. This would be my Lean Start-up having both tangible and intangible benefits.

By Rashmika Santra