The Association of PET Recyclers Bharat (APR Bharat) has launched ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra,’ a on-ground awareness and collection initiative aimed at educating people about the value of recycling PET bottles and demonstrating how a discarded bottle can become a valuable resource for the economy.
As part of the 15-day pilot campaign, a specially designed Van will travel across four high-footfall locations in Muzaffarnagar and Meerut, along the Kanwar Yatra route. The campaign will engage pilgrims and the wider public on the importance of responsible disposal, while collecting used PET bottles generated during the pilgrimage and channelising them into the formal recycling ecosystem.
The initiative comes at a time when the government has been emphasizing on the need to promote austerity in imports to protect its foreign currency reserves and push for indigenisation of over 200 import-dependent petrochemical items. Global geopolitical disruptions and supply-chain volatility have demonstrated the vulnerability of industries dependent on uninterrupted supplies of virgin polymers. Transition to r-PET (recycled PET) is crucial to ensure national resource security, reduce import dependence, and ensure a more resilient domestic packaging supply chain.
The ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’ campaign seeks to turn one of India’s largest mass public gatherings into a platform for communicating a simple but important message: plastic is not waste when it is responsibly collected and recycled.
Commenting on the launch, Goutham Jain, director general, APR (Association of PET Recyclers) Bharat, said, “Our main objective of launching ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’ is to make recycling tangible and relatable. A discarded PET bottle should not be viewed as the end of its journey. With the right collection and recycling systems, it can become the starting point for another bottle. The Kanwar Yatra provides us with a unique opportunity to take the message of recycling directly to people at an extraordinary scale. Rather than simply talking about plastic waste, our campaign demonstrates what happens when PET bottles are collected and channelled into recycling. Through this pilot, we want to create awareness that responsible consumption must also be accompanied by responsible disposal.”
Jain underscored that although the government has mandated the use of 40% recycled inputs in plastic packaging by 2026–27, implementation at the ground level remains limited and falls short of the intended transition towards a closed loop manufacturing ecosystem. He stressed that reliance on virgin PET derived from crude oil depletes national resources. In contrast, the large-scale adoption of recycled PET can help conserve critical resources while accelerating the transition towards a more sustainable, circular, and environmentally responsible plastic value chain.
The awareness van will serve as a mobile information and collection center, engaging pilgrims and visitors on the importance of segregating and disposing of PET bottles responsibly. The collected PET bottles will subsequently enter the recycling chain, showcasing the circular economy in action.
APR Bharat plans to take the campaign to other parts of the country, including Western, Eastern and Southern India, to build large-scale public awareness around PET recycling and responsible plastic waste management.
“At a time when global polymer supply chains are experiencing volatility and India is simultaneously building significant domestic recycling capacity, recycling has a much larger role to play than simply managing waste. It can help create a more circular, resource-efficient and resilient manufacturing ecosystem for India. Every bottle that is responsibly disposed of and recycled represents a resource that can be recovered and reused,” Jain added.
