How India's local recyclers could solve plastic pollution

India has one of the world's highest rates of plastic recycling, thanks largely to an extensive network of informal recyclers known as "kabadiwalas." Entrepreneur Mani Vajipey discusses his work to organize their massive efforts into a collection system that could put India on the path to ending plastic pollution -- and show the rest of the world how to do it, too.

Shah Rukh Khan: Say no to plastic.

The one thing that
all environmental warriors teach us.

But we begin and end the day

with products that have been made

from this virtually
indestructible material.

The truth is that our consumption
and disposal of plastic has reached

such unsustainable proportions

that we need to address this
using every idea and resource at hand.

Please welcome someone who's helping
solve India's waste management issues,

Mani Vajipey,

recycler and cofounder/CEO
of Banyan Nation.

(Applause)

Mani Vajipey: If recycling
were an Olympic sport,

India would win the gold medal.

India has one of the highest rates

of plastic recycling and recovery
in the entire world.

Higher than the likes of Singapore,

countries in North America
and even countries in Europe.

India recovers and recycles
over 60 percent of its plastic waste,

whereas a developed country,
like United States,

manages just about 10 percent.

This high rate of collection
is largely possible

thanks to the millions
of informal recyclers,

the kabadiwalas, the bhandiwallas
and the raddiwalas

that we find at every street corner
across every city in India.

And yet, in spite of such a ubiquitous,

extensive and intricate
network of recyclers,

India's national scenery
is dominated by filth and squalor.

And the general perception
is that we don't recycle our plastics.

The other thing about plastics in India

is that any product
made from recycled plastic

is considered to be substandard

and we expect it to be cheaper as well.

What we don't realize is
there are several types of plastics

in their virgin and pure form,

if recycled scientifically,

can be recycled several times over

without any compromise in quality.

If we can recover and reuse
our discarded plastic,

then we save a significant
amount of virgin plastic

that we would have otherwise
produced and consumed.

And this is very important,

because virgin plastic
is made from fossil fuels

that are an exhaustible resource.

The more virgin plastic
we produce and consume,

the more plastic waste we have to manage.

Mismanagement of plastic waste

leads to the leakage of such materials
into our water bodies.

It's now common knowledge
that by the year 2050

we'll have more plastics
in our oceans than fish.

About seven years ago,

my friend and cofounder Raj and I,

we decided that we were going to focus
on solving this massive problem.

We went around the city of Hyderabad,

talking to local recyclers.

Very soon, we found out

that there were many recyclers
just in Hyderabad alone.

We soon realized

that the plastic recycling
industry of today

is not very different
from the milk industry

of the '60s and '70s.

Milk in India is produced
by marginal milk farmers,

with two or three cows or buffalos,

who produce five to ten
liters of milk a day.

Instead of blindly aping
solutions from the West,

India championed
the milk cooperative model,

where thousands of such
small-scale recyclers

were brought together into groups.

With scale came innovations
and investments.

India was transformed
from a milk-deficit nation

to the world's leading
exporter and producer of milk.

It dawned upon us
that India had in the past

solved much larger problems,
like milk deficiency.

We only need to look back to our past

to find inspiration in solving

what is perhaps the most
fundamental issue of our times,

that is plastic pollution.

But before we could do this,

or before brands
could use recycled plastic,

we had to solve two things.

Quality and scale.

For us, to make a shampoo bottle
from discarded plastics,

we had to collect tens of thousands
of tons of discarded plastics.

For that, we needed data.

Raj and I built a simple
data intelligence platform

that allowed us to map all the recyclers,

giving us a bird's eye view
of every recycler in Hyderabad.

The results were astounding.

There were 2,000 kabadiwalas
just in Hyderabad alone.

That means, for every square kilometer,

there were four kabadiwalas
or informal recyclers.

No developed country or city
in the entire world

has the luxury of such a brilliant
collection system.

(Applause)

Once we had the data,

the rest was fairly straightforward.

We started trading
with the informal recyclers,

we started training them
to segregate the materials

based on our quality specifications.

In the past five years,

we've developed several clusters
across South India,

comprising of thousands
of such informal recyclers,

who interact with us
both directly and digitally.

In parallel, we began working

on the problem of quality
and purity of material.

So in the past five years,

we developed a proprietary
cleaning technology

that allows us to eliminate
all contaminants.

Today, Banyan's recycled granules

have undergone stringent quality testing

and have been certified by top
global FMCG and automotive companies.

In the next few months,

tens of thousands of discarded plastics

collected through informal
recycler networks

will be converted
into high-quality granules

and sent away to brands
and large companies

to make bottles for engine-oil packaging,

for shampoo bottles and for lotions.

In the next three years,

we expect that over 500 million
such bottles will be made

from our recycled plastics.

(Applause)

But this is just the beginning.

In the next five years,

we aspire to build an India

where 100 percent of discarded plastics

are recycled and
repurposed scientifically --

where plastic waste
no longer threatens our water bodies,

and the very survival
of our terrestrial and marine life.

So the next time you go to a store
and pick up a shampoo bottle,

see if that bottle uses safe
and sustainable recycled plastic.

That's not only just
going to help the Earth

but also reward the street corner recycler

for his all-important work.

Now that will compel brands

to use more and more recycled plastic

for their mainstream products
and applications.

Our tradition and our culture
has a lot of ancient wisdom.

Let's not destroy the only planet we have.

The only home we have.

Thank you.

(Applause)

SRK: Thank you, Mani.

When I was young, I used to --
(sings in Hindi).

How little do we know sometimes
that we are, as a nation,

the biggest recycler
of plastics and waste,

if not just plastic,

and we didn't know this
about our own country.

MV: May I say something really cool?

Cities like New York and Paris today

are looking to put out
reverse vending machines

so that people can go
and put trash in that

and then they can get some cash.

For the past several decades,

the entire country and the kabadiwalas,

and the bhandiwallas,
we have been doing that.

I'm very positive
that in three to five years,

you'll wake up, you know
that the plastic is being recycled,

you're going to pick up a packaging,

you know that the package
actually has a mark

that uses recycled plastics,

so I'm super optimistic about this.

Even as an entrepreneur.

(Applause)

SRK: When I see a youngster
do what he has done and achieved,

I want that part to also be
a source of encouragement

for people to take over.

So tell me, are you making a lot of money?

MV: What's so brilliant
about plastic recycling now is

it's an idea whose time has come.

And we're very fortunate to have signed

a really big, multimillion-dollar contract

with some of the top FMCG companies.

So we are at the inflection
point in India.

And --

SRK: Tell us the money,
money, money, Mani.

MV: (Laughs)

SRK: Give the figure,
it will encourage people,

it's not for greed,
it's not for any of the reasons ...

Say to them.

They are making good money, yeah.

(Applause)

MV: For us, to build
these systems in place,

we need investors
who will back us to develop --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SRK: You have to be like Mani

that I'm asking, "How much you're making?"

he's already making it off me.

But I may look stupid, but I'm not.

I totally and completely believe

in the concept of recycling plastic,

and I'm going to help Mani
with my first investment

that all the plastic bottles
that we have at shootings,

in every shooting of mine,

I'm going to send it
to his company to recycle,

starting from these four.

Thank you very much, Mani.

(Applause)

MV: Thank you so much.

SRK: Big round of applause for Mani.

(Applause)