How one company is helping India progress towards a circular economy

Global recycling company Gemini Corporation has its sights set on turning India's mounting plastic waste problem into huge profits.

The country's plastic recycling industry is highly unorganised, with persons scavenging rubbish dumps to assemble material without protective clothing, while health insurance and safety standards are often non-existent at scrap dealers' facilities where staff sort through mountains of trash. Plastic recycling in India is largely a 'grey market', and for Belgium-based Gemini, it sees a lucrative opportunity to turn the sector right into a formal economy.

“We are trying to connect all of the stakeholders and think of a programme where we benefit everyone through a good business design,” says Hanumant Saraf, the business enterprise head of Gemini's India operations, Gemcorp Recycling & Technologies. “It's a blend of commercial, it's a mixture of social aspect, and a blend of environment.”

The company is seeking to capitalise on an possibility to generate revenues as plastic use in the united states increases - as does the amount of waste generated.

India's Ministry of Petroleum and GAS forecasts the annual per capita consumption of plastic in the country - which has a population greater than 1.3 billion people - will almost double to 20kg by 2022 weighed against 11kg in 2015.

This is attributed to increasing urbanisation and an expansion of consumer spending consistent with economic growth. The country generates an estimated 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste each day, and a written report by The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) says only 60 per cent of the country's plastic waste is recycled.

“As India progresses towards a circular economy, there exists a have to transition towards improved waste management,” Teri says. “The plastic industry, due to its use in a multitude of sectors, such as the automotive, construction, electronics, healthcare, and textiles, is among the most effective growing markets.”

Gemini started its India subsidiary in October 2019, and its own growth has been rapid. It really is already collecting some 3,500 tonnes of plastic waste each month and has a occurrence across India in 15 states including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Delhi, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Maharashtra. The business has 25 waste collection centres and has generated its first recycling plant in the united states in Navi Mumbai, a satellite city of Mumbai. Its expansion strategy includes establishing 15 such recycling plants in India. It declined to disclose just how much it plans to get, but Mr Saraf describes it as a “good sum of money over the next 2-3 years”.

Established in 1989, Gemini Corporation exists in 26 countries and describes itself as “one of the world’s largest circular economy market makers”. The business says it has recycled some 1.7 million tonnes of material worldwide, including plastics, paper, metal and rubber.

In India, it really is taking a ground-up approach. Gemini has partnered with the tiny, highly unorganised scrap dealers across India that dominate the waste collection industry and is helping them to streamline their collection methods and develop safe practices for workers, providing them with protective gear and training together with creating systems that are more environmentally-friendly.

“We help them to grow as a formal industry,” Mr Saraf says. Often, small scrap dealers in India do not have even bank accounts and count on cash, but Gemini insists that its partners transfer to the formal economic climate to utilize it.

“We give them financial assistance, social security and insurance, we give them drinking water, we provide them with fire-fighting equipment, we give them the know-how on maintaining the books and the records,” Mr Saraf says. "The work environment is quite bad” for most recyclers, with women having to travel one kilometre to access toilets as there are no proper sanitation facilities on site. Another significant problem is child labour, that your company really wants to stamp out.

He says that Gemini advantages from helping its scrap dealer partners to boost their procedures because “if indeed they grow, we will grow”.

Factors that are driving the potential of the sector include concerns around climate change, with India investing in reduce its carbon emissions as part of the Paris climate change agreement.

“Recycling is probably the areas that can reduce the carbon footprint substantially,” Mr Saraf says.

The limited option of recycleables is another driver.

“Natural resources are scarce. Day-by-day the populace is increasing and the supply demand gap will increase,” he says. “Recycled products can be a game changer since it helps to conserve natural resources.”

The potential financial benefits for India of concentrating on a circular economy are enormous, research suggests. A report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2016 found that India could generate benefits worth a lot more than $620 billion a year through creating a circular economy, equal to 30 per cent of the country's GDP at that time.

“Considering that India aspires to become global manufacturing hub, we would witness higher degrees of consumption of raw materials, than what’s necessary to meet India’s domestic needs,” Prasanna Karthik, a fresh Delhi based strategy consultant and public policy expert, wrote in a written report published by think tank Observer Research Foundation in May. “Therefore, India’s traditional take-make-waste linear economic approach will cause extreme ecological damage with untoward monetary and social ramifications.”

Analysts also highlight that recycling may also create cheaper products for the Indian market, and that we now have significant untapped business opportunities in the sector.

Although Gemini has only been operating its plastic waste management company in India for over year, it were able to break even in its third month of operations, Mr Saraf says.

“We are growing extremely fast and we be prepared to grow by five-to-ten times over another few years. That's our vision. It is a commercial venture.”

Considering that the industry is at a “nascent stage” with few large recycling companies operating over the whole country, this means that the growth potential is specially high, he adds.

Scrap dealers can also enhance their profits, he argues.

“We support them with the infrastructure to scale up their existing business,” Mr Saraf says. The business provides machinery to scrap dealers, for instance, free of cost. Subsequently, the dealers need to provide Gemini with 1,000 tonnes of waste over 3 years at the marketplace rate, and the ownership of the gear is used in the dealer.

The process of expanding in India is fraught with difficulties, however, and it is not a fairly easy process to attempt to formalise these smaller businesses.

“Another challenge is the quality of the material,” says Mr Saraf. “In order a recycler we face a whole lot of challenges.”

Since it continues to scale up its operations in India, the business also has to generate new avenues to market recycled materials and is in discussions with “a few corporations” to market these products globally, he says.

For the plastic recycling industry to realise its full potential in India, Mr Saraf says there needs to be greater efforts from the authorities to support the sector, that could include a permanent policy to attract investment and the introduction of subsidies and tax advantages to encourage recycling.

Most importantly, there must a change in consumer behaviour, he argues.

“Plastic's a wonderful material and we've benefitted a whole lot from it, but as citizens we also have to be responsible,” he says.