One question that often strikes the mind is: What do consumers in India do with PET mineral water bottles after using up the contents? Well, they either dump it in a trash can or keep it for reuse, which is quite hazardous for health. Biocrux India aims to change this process with its 360° solution for plastic waste, which is a recycling mechanism at the centre of which is a bottle crusher that converts PET bottles into flakes to be used as raw material for making resin. This recycled resin can then be used for manufacturing different plastic products like trash bins, toilet cabins and even paint among others.
Biocrux is the brainchild of Ajay Mishra, a chartered accountant, who quit his corporate career to establish his own start-up after the devastating 2005 Mumbai floods, which left a lasting impression on him. He had seen the consequences of plastic waste choking up the drainage system and causing flash floods in different parts of the city. A free-flowing drainage system would have controlled the damage and destruction caused by the flood to a large extent.
Mishra was soon joined by Asesh Sarkar, a paint industry professional, and by 2012 the first Biocrux bottle crusher machine was installed at Inorbit Mall in the western suburbs of Mumbai. At present, these machines are installed in different public places across Pune and Bengaluru and would soon be installed in another four to five cities by the end of this financial year. Bisleri, the mineral water major, was the first company to sponsor the Biocrux machines.
The machine is an excellent option for treating plastic waste at source and Mishra is confident that this approach saves a lot of CO2 emission in recycling, reduces transportation costs, saves fuel by 9-10 times in handling of such waste and uses around 66% less water as compared to existing plastic recycling processes. These figures need to be considered in the context of many expert suggestions about the need to treat waste at source rather than take them all the way to landfills.
Mishra learnt that municipalities exhaust 70–90% of their budget on the logistics of waste clearance. Biocrux bottle crusher machines, which are of the size as a refrigerator, can be easily installed in public places where people can operate them on their own, to crush the PET bottles they use. Operation is just a snap; one just needs to insert the bottle in an enclosure on the machine which barely takes a few seconds. This way, it gives the user a sense of satisfaction of having disposed off the PET bottle through the right channel from where it will be recycled properly and not end up in a landfill.
