"UFlex is Committed to Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2035"

Jeevaraj Gopal Pillai is an eminent leader in the packaging industry. A mechanical engineer with an MBA degree, Pillai has been associated with UFlex, a renowned packaging company, for the last 27 years.

- Saurabh Kumar

He has more than 34 years of industry experience, spanning various aspects of packaging technology from pre-press to high-end conversion to designing flexible packaging materials for circularity. In this interview with Saurabh Kumar, he emphasises the importance of building a circular packaging economy

UFlex is a pioneer in plastic circularity. How has the sustainable packaging ecosystem evolved in India and globally over the decades?

Sustainability is not just a talking point in packaging anymore, but it has become an essential part of the industry DNA. For years, the packaging industry has led innovation, developing more sustainable materials and technologies for effectively recycling difficult-torecycle plastics.

How enabling are the policies and laws?

There are regulations in place in most countries to address the issue. In India, we are in the middle of implementing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) based on a cardinal principle: every polluter must collect waste. This covers producers, importers, brand owners of plastic packaging material, and plastic waste processors.

This mechanism is centralised via a portal where inputs and outputs are balanced, similar to GST. It's an effective system that prevents potential tampering or deception. This well-designed EPR obligates all stakeholders to reuse, recycle, reduce the use of virgin material, and provide end-of-life to balance material. In India, we have gone beyond discussing the removal of plastic waste from the environment to defining mechanisms for addressing the collected waste and outlining the associated obligations. It is also an economic model, which promotes the development of recycling infrastructure and rewards recyclers by awarding them tradable certificates. Being market-driven, it speeds up policy implementation.