World Environment Day: Community-Driven Stories of Innovation
Humanity produces over 430 million tons of plastic annually, and plastic pollution's social and economic costs range between $300 to $600 billion per year. On World Environment Day this week, the drive for global action is unmistakable, with innovative, community-driven solutions taking center stage. With this year's #BeatPlasticPollution theme in mind, we wanted to highlight inspiring startups tackling plastic pollution with founders from Indian diaspora backgrounds.
ZeroCircle
ZeroCircle’s innovative seaweed-based material (Source: their own website: https://www.zerocircle.in/)
Despite international efforts to reduce plastic pollution, global production of primary plastic will reach 1,100 million tons by 2050. In the face of this, a Maharashtra-based startup is leveraging an unconventional alternative to plastic for packaging uses: seaweed.
ZeroCircle, founded by former Google employee Neha Jain, recently came second in the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize, a global search for sustainable alternatives to plastic. Their invention is a substitute for fossil fuel-based thin-film polybags using seaweed, and the company has already created several prototypes, such as grocery bags, dissolvable tea bags, edible burger wrappers, edible soup sachets and packaging for clothes and apparel.
A type of algae that only blooms in marine water, seaweed doesn't require any resources such as land or freshwater to grow. ZeroCircle's alternative seaweed-based material is marine degradable, home compostable and bio-digestible — safe for consumption, in simpler words. ZeroCircle hopes to launch its first product — a coating for paper — in September this year. The startup has validated the prototype for its seaweed-based material from the market and is also in discussions with multiple brands eagerly awaiting their product launch.
Ashaya
Ashaya’s sunglasses made out of recycled chip packets (Source: their own website: https://ashaya.in/product/r-sunglasses/)
Ashaya is a Pune-based social enterprise with bold plans - to increase the value of waste via technological innovations and fairly redistribute that value to stakeholders in the supply chain, especially those who are the poorest: waste pickers.
Noticing massive amounts of discarded chip packets and chocolate wrappers in landfill, the founder and CEO of Ashaya, Anish Malpani, wondered how to recycle that distinct waste material. Chip packets are made of multi-layered plastic (MLP), a 'composite waste that is considered economically and technically impossible to recycle', according to Malpani. That's why it took over two years for the startup to find a way to use chemistry, engineering and mechanics to extract materials from the waste and convert them into high-quality products. Ashaya is the first of its kind worldwide, now selling sunglasses made from recycled MLP under the brand name WITHOUT. The company sold 500 pairs of sunglasses online during their initial pilot phase and generated revenue of Rs 11 lakh within one week of launching.
Ashaya has also hired waste-pickers, owning its entire supply chain from waste to market. Buying a pair of Without is also about having an impact, as 10% of sales go towards keeping the kids of waste-pickers in school. We have previously profiled Anish's unique story at Indiaspora, and you can learn more about him here.
rePurpose Global
rePurpose Global’s Plastic Credit protocol (taken from their own website: https://www.business.repurpose.global/plasticcreditprotocol)
RePurpose Global is a plastic credit platform inspired by the carbon credit market. Similar to being carbon neutral, RePurpose allows individuals and businesses to become plastic-neutral and take responsibility for their plastic footprint by funding the recycling of an equivalent amount of plastic waste. RePurpose funds plastic recovery projects across six countries and works with organizations like Nestlé, World Wildlife Fund and the World Bank to create an international plastic offset standard. In the four years since its founding, rePurpose Global has concentrated on giving CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies a concrete and verifiable way to take action on their global plastic footprint and fight plastic pollution.
The company's co-founders, Peter Wang Hjemdahl, Svanika Balasubramanian and Aditya Siroya, have diverse backgrounds. Peter grew up between Norway and China. Svanika and Aditya have roots in India, and all three studied in the US, where they met.
One of the key ways in which this company is tackling the plastic crisis is by building the infrastructure to sort, process and recycle plastics in areas where it doesn't exist today. The company finances the expansion of impact projects where trained employees sort gathered trash into specific plastic categories (recycled, compostable, low value), ensuring that any viable plastic is recycled.
RePurpose Global's model is unique as it incentivizes the collection of low-value plastics that are hardly ever worth gathering, sorting, and transporting for processing. The United Nations Environment Programme recognized RePurpose as one of the top 12 innovations in plastic recycling.
Shalaka Laxman works as a Product Manager in London, focusing on developing sustainable financial products for large corporates. Before moving to London, she previously lived in New York and graduated with a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia in 2014. Outside the day job, she writes a weekly newsletter with the latest developments in the sustainability space and runs By Shax, her own independent, conscious art and homeware brand. Shalaka grew up in Dubai before heading to the U.S. for university and enjoys reading, traveling, and all things cat-related, alongside time with family and friends.
