Industry collaborates to launch Asia’s largest packaging waste management venture

Incubated by Packaging Association for Clean Environment

October 5, 2019

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Vimal Kedia, president, Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE)

To address the growing concern of plastic waste in India, 31 leading companies in the industry have joined forces to launch Asia’s largest, first-of-its-kind, producer-led and -owned venture for creating a formal plastic circular economy in the country. Together, the participating companies will mobilize and converge assets, resources, and investment upwards of Rs 1000 crore.

Ahmed El Sheikh, president of PepsiCo India, T Krishnakumar, president of Coca-Cola India and southwest Asia and Angelo George, chief executive officer of Bisleri launched the new producer-led venture ‘Karo Sambhav – Closing Material Loops,’ to create an efficient value chain for collection of post-consumer packaging and optimize material recycling processes.

Some of the other companies that have committed to joining hands for this venture include Diageo, Parle Agro, Cavin Kare, Manjushree, Reliance Industries, SC Johnson, IVL-Dhunseri, Pearl Drinks, Varun Beverages Limited and Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited. Action Alliance for Recycling Beverage Cartons is also supporting the venture.

The approach to setting up a new producer-led venture was developed and incubated by the Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE) for over a year with the objective of developing a transformative system that enables inclusion, ethics, transparency, good governance and traceability of waste.

Speaking on the occasion, Vimal Kedia, president, PACE said, “This unique venture will focus on closing the material loops for multiple types of packaging materials and shall bring together 60% of the plastics value chain in India. It will bring convergence to multiple solutions being put by producers individually.”

The venture plans to have a network of 125 material recovery facilities across the country, which will work with 2500 aggregators over the next three years. The project will be scaled up in phases and focus on alignment with the government’s Swachh Bharat Mission and a zero-waste movement, enabling utilization of secondary materials post recycling, ensuring that no recyclable packaging material ends up in landfills by 2025 and transforming the linear value chain of packaging material into a robust and efficient recyclable material circular economy.

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