Recycling Wheel

How Gujarat succeeded in co-processing plastic waste in cement kilns and promoted a circular economy

- Hardik Shah

GUJARAT CONTRIBUTES about 30 per cent of India’s paper production and all its paper mills, except one, use recycled paper. Most of these industries are concentrated in two pockets: south Gujarat (between Ankleshwar and Vapi) and central Gujarat (between Gandhinagar and Mehsana). While recycled paper-based industries are considered eco-friendly in terms of their resource consumption, they generate a lot of plastic waste.

When high-end glossy publications and magazines are sent to the pulping machine, the plastic coated on the front page is separated from the paper, either manually or through an automatic system. Typically, plastic constitutes around 1-2 per cent of the total paper that goes into the pulping machine. So the generation of plastic waste was huge. For instance, manufacturing units in and around the Vapi industrial area in south Gujarat alone generated about 400 metric tonnes of plastic waste.

Though efforts were made to make some useful products such as plastic roofs and benches from plastic waste, these initiatives couldn’t succeed due to various techno-commercial reasons. Plastic waste comes in different shapes and sizes; it is dark-coloured; and importantly, is very dirty. Traditionally, this waste was collected and stored at a place outside town. Its disposal, therefore, was a big problem. Most industries used to either dump it at Vapi’s landfill or would make heaps of it at remote locations outside town, where it would be stored for months. Such waste heaps would often catch fire and burn for days, generating toxic fumes, in addition to greenhouse gases. This illegal practice continued for several years.

Marking a transition