By Juhi Kastiya
It is commonly known that developing countries have lower capacities and limited provisions for waste management relative to those of developed countries, in terms of proper discarding of trash, its treatment, recycling and much more. However there are several companies that are bringing change by the way they reuse and recycle waste into tangible products that have socio-economic benefits as well as environmental.
They create jobs in rural areas, giving opportunities to women and helping the local labour improve their skills too. These companies have not only worked towards resolving our problem with trash and helping their surrounding ecosystems stay clear of it but also found a way to create wealth from waste.
One of such companies is Code Effort (code is an acronym for Conserve Our Depleting Environment) which recycles cigarettes. This company is based in India, a country consisting of an estimated 266 million smokers, these smokers generally consume between 1-5 cigarettes a day, assuming an average of 3 it leads us to a daily consumption of 798 million cigarettes nationally.
The discarded part of the cigarette is known as the cigarette butt, which takes between 10-12 years to decompose and has a filter which is 95% plastic. Code Effort gets their cigarette waste from more than 2,000 ragpickers and collects up to 1,000 kg of cigarette waste everyday.
The Code Effort has also installed their own bins known as VBins for proper disposal of cigarettes in public places in Delhi and Noida. They can process upto 45 tonnes of cigarette butts daily. Their focus is on upscaling every component of a cigarette. They upscale the tobacco into a compost powder and the paper into mosquito repellent, since tobacco is a natural pesticide.
The fibres once done being treated and tested for its quality are used in stuffing for pillows, toys and much more. Code Effort was enlisted in Limca’s book of records for recycling 300 million cigarettes in FY 2020-21. As of March 2022 they have recycled an approximate of 1.2 billion cigarettes and aim for 400-500 tonnes of cigarette waste by 2025.
Phool, which is the Hindi word for flower, is another company based in India collects flowers from temples which generates around 20 tonnes of flower waste daily. More than 8 million tonnes of flowers are dumped in water bodies such as rivers every year. This spreads the toxic pesticides and insecticides that were used to help protect them into the water damaging marine life. Phool collects these flowers from temples, sorts, depetals and dries them.
After which they are grinded into a fine powder and mixed with water and essential oils until they turn into a clay-like texture, with which they can be rolled into incense sticks or pressed into cones and dried again. Each worker can produce over 500 incense sticks in an hour.
Another problem is that India generates 3.4 million tonnes of plastic waste in a year, of which only 30% is recycled. Another Indian company, which is named Thaely, creates sneakers from 100% recycled materials. Each pair of sneakers is made using 10 plastic bags and 12 bottles. They have contracts with rag pickers who deliver to them plastic bags they sort out from trash centres, once they are cleaned at the facility, the sheets are layered together and pressed together until it makes a sturdier and thicker sheet. This forms the primary material used to make the shoe, the other material is a fabric made from recycled bottles which has a similar texture to that of canvas.
The soles are made from recycled rubber and laces from recycled plastic. They make 15,000 pairs of shoes weekly.
Another company that focuses on creating clothes from recycled materials is Artistic Fabric Mills (AFM). Based in Pakistan, They focus on repurposing and recycling jeans, one of the most common staples from everyone’s wardrobe. Annually there are 6 billion pairs of jeans produced, against which 2.16 million tonnes of jeans are discarded as well. AFM grinds the old jeans back into cotton which is then mixed with virgin cotton, upto 30% of their blend is recycled cotton. They also dye their fabric with recycled indigo dye and lasers to print the “distressed” look on the jeans, eliminating water waste from their processes. They also purify 300,000 gallons of water daily, 70% of which they use in their recycling process. In contrast to this a normal pair of jeans uses 10,000 litres in its production process.
They say change occurs step by step, well these companies do it brick by brick. In Nairobi Kenya, a company named Gijenge Makers (Gijenge is the swahili word which means to build yourself) uses recycled plastic to make bricks that help build paved roads. They reuse three out of the seven types of single use plastics.
Gijenge makers sort through 10 metric tonnes of plastic a month. The bricks they make can substitute for concrete in terms of their hardness and can be 25% cheaper than concrete.
Another company named Freee Recycle is a Nigerian company that upcycles old tyres into bricks that can be used for driveways, playgrounds and gyms. They buy the old tyres from local garages and separate the rubber from the steel wires within the tyre. Each tyre can make 25 pavement bricks after it has been cut into minuscule pieces, processed and pressed by a hydraulic press.
The very process that makes the rubber of a tyre so durable, known as vulcanization, is also what makes it hard to recycle. There are already 4 billion tyres in landfills and once tyres end up in landfills they not only release toxic gases but are also a fire hazard.
In Thanh Hoa, Vietnam a company named Fuwa Biotech turns fruit scraps into natural and organic soap and cleansers. For every pineapple consumed, half of it ends up in the trash, usually landfills where it releases methane as it decomposes, if it is not composted properly. Fuwa Biotech sources pineapple scraps which it adds to a mixture of water and sugar, letting it ferment for three months and stirring it daily. After these three months of fermentation there is enough acid and enzyme created in the mixture for it to work as a cleanser.
This solution is filtered to separate the liquid which is used as a base for the company’s cleansers and the leftovers are used as fertilisers in nearby farms.
This cleanser is a much healthier solution for the environment as everything about it is organic and easily decomposable. However natural detergents are not easy to be treated by the water treatment plants since they contain added nitrogen and phosphorus, when this improperly treated water mixes with other water bodies it accelerates the growth of algae which after a certain extent begins to suffocate the underwater ecosystem.
These are just some of the few entrepreneurs who identified a problem and found a sustainable solution through allocating unforeseen resources such as waste through upcycling processes. They work to bring about change that leaves a positive impact on the globe and its climate crisis. These businesses exemplify how sustainable practices can not only benefit the environment but also drive innovation and create economic opportunities.
Comments