With New Start-Ups Venturing into Polyethylene Terephthalate Recycling, India Accelerates Battle with the Plastic Waste

India is an active generator of more than 10 million plastic waste in a year and this drives the attention of the polymer producing belts of the nation to navigate the adoption of reused plastics over virgin plastics.

This has created an opportunity for many companies to venture into businesses like waste-recycling solutions and become the bright spot when the country is already making hefty investments to establish a circular economy.

An emerging brand in the Polyethylene Terephthalate industry, Green India Polymer is a global PET marketing and distribution company having ties with the world’s leading producers and users of plastics and chemicals. With its presence in the Middle East and South Asia, the company has laid capacity expansion plans in the countries worldwide including an upcoming plant in Ajman, UAE.

Launched in 2018, the Green India Polymer has an annual turn-over of USD 4 million and advancing with the mindset of Circular Economy, the young profitable organization recycles around 1000 MT of plastic every month to produce PET Flakes and Polyethylene Terephthalate Resins or Granules.

The company exports resins to its clients based in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Morocco, Germany, Cape Town etc. In India, the startup is majorly egaged into PET distribution and not manufacturing. In a span of just 3 years, Green India Polymers has become the front-runner among its various competitors in the global recycling industry.

The idea of transforming waste into valuables has attracted strong investments from the players overseas, one such being Singapore-based Circulate Capital which has recently announced to dedicate half of its USD 106 million “ocean fund" to India. The fund aims at cutting the amount of plastic waste released into the ocean from the South and Southeast Asia. The investment management firm has committed to grant USD 39 million to six Indian companies so far.

As per the sources, the global PET (polyethylene terephthalate) market touched 12.6 million tons, by volume in 2019. Hence, this expansive market will be the key driving force for several PET producers who are looking forward to collaborating and devise more sustainable production configurations. As stated by an industry leader, currently almost all of the recycled bottle-grade PET plastic for use in bottling is imported. The domestic R-PET is majorly downcycled into textiles and apparel industries. Recycling the Polyethylene Terephthalate plastic which is used majorly in soft drinks and water bottles, poses a great opportunity for such firms.

As per ChemAnalyst, “The global plastics recycling market is estimated to reach at USD 110.88 billion by 2025. Hence, PET recycling is a huge business, benefitting almost all the major players involved as India is already proposing to enforce extended producer responsibility (EPR) rules. The idea of transitioning from a linear to circular economy would require deep inter-connectedness of polymer industries to bring India closer to meet its sustainable development goals 2030.”