The Indian company Gemcorp works to create efficient, equitable and formalised value chains for plastic across India, with different solutions from state to state.
In Kerala, the authorities have entrusted the collection of household plastic waste to a women’s cooperative, which has proved more effective than if the municipalities were to do it themselves. Households pay a fixed fee to the women’s cooperative, which forms an important part of their income base. The result is a system that provides employment for women who were previously outside the labour market, while ensuring that plastic waste is material recycled efficiently.
See how the system works here:
Formalised value chains
The plastic collected by the women’s cooperative is fed into GemCorp’s recycling system, which guarantees that the collected plastic is material recycled.
– The women gain access to better physical facilities and have their wages paid into bank accounts rather than in cash. This makes them part of a formal circular economy that can be replicated in any part of India, says Gemcorp’s Director of Sustainability and Strategy, Vikas Chhajer, adding that they require all transactions they are involved in to be cashless.
Multiple stages
“The women go from door to door, collecting the plastic waste and taking it to their nearest collection point, where it is roughly sorted. From there, it is transported by lorry to a sorting facility, where it is sorted more thoroughly before being sent for recycling,” explains Sooraj Abraham, founder of the non-profit organisation Plan@earth.
Plan@earth operates the sorting facility where the waste is sent after it has been roughly sorted. Abraham says that the facility is currently one of the very largest in Kerala, where they ensure that the plastic is sorted into different plastic fractions. Once the plastic has been sorted, it is fed into a baling press, which compresses the plastic into a far more manageable and space-saving size.
This means that each lorry transporting the plastic to the recycling facility can carry more plastic. Overall, efficiency increases by eight to twenty times.
“The balers (compactors) are a game changer,” says Chhajer, explaining that they can now use the space far more efficiently at no extra cost, in addition to significantly reduced transport costs.
Many opportunities
GemCorp believes the project’s potential is enormous and wants to expand it to the whole of India, and possibly to other countries.
Through the project, they aim to reduce plastic litter while also changing people’s perception of waste and recycling. By offering high-quality recycled plastic to brand owners, they also enable this group to become more circular.
In addition, the project helps ensure that underprivileged members of society gain access to financial stability, sanitation and medical facilities. Improved finances for the women also enable them to provide better education for their children.
