How to destroy Plastic waste from India Completely?
Gijo Vijayan
Dear Friends
My name is Gijo Vijayan, I am a Plastic waste recycling consultant from India on a mission to eliminate plastic waste from India by setting up Plastic recycling plants all over India. You can reach me at Mob: +91 9798404042 (Phone/Whatsapp), email: sa...@glaubenimpex.com.
We can recycle most of the plastic waste generated in our country, provided we follow a systematic and scientific approach towards this menace. All over our print, electronic and social media people are shouting everyday about plastic waste and how it is destroying lands and oceans. But few people are giving out solutions and I am one among them.
India needs to set up thousands of plastic waste recycling plants all over India and recycle and reuse the waste plastic. This can create huge amount of employment among people and almost completely eliminate the plastic waste from our premises.
The biggest problem now is that people around including policy makers, entrepreneurs, politicians’ celebrities etc do not know what to do with waste plastic. This is because most of them lack a scientific mind and never think of solution to the problem. The solution to plastic waste is very simple, recover, recycle and re-use. This can bring profound changes in our economy.
India generates close to 26,000 tonnes of plastic a day, according to a CPCB estimate from 2012. Worse, a little over 10,000 tonnes a day of plastic waste remains uncollected. Uncollected plastic waste eventually ends up in the natural environment — in our seas and oceans or piling up on our lands.
Countries all over the world are destroying the planet by no recycling the waste plastic. One of the largest producers of waste plastic is USA and it recycle only 36% of Plastic waste it generates. Recently China has banned import of Plastic waste from USA, and it has created hell lot of problems there, because USA do not have adequate infrastructure to recycle waste plastic they produce.
A whopping 91% of plastic isn’t recycled all over the world, read National Geographic Article . Billions of tons of plastic have been made over the past decades, and much of it is becoming trash and litter, finds the first analysis of the issue. Now you can imagine the grave problem that is affecting our planet due to huge plastic waste that is polluting our environment. It is said that by 2050, our oceans are going to have more plastic than fishes.
How are most Microplastics formed?
Primary microplastics include microbeads, nurdles and fibres. These are manufactured as microplastics, that is as particles of 5mm or smaller. … Secondary microplastics are formed because of larger plastics breaking down. UV rays, wind and wave action causes plastic to fragment into millions of smaller pieces. The plastic waste that land up in ocean breaks down into microplastics and then it is consumed by fishes and various marine organisms, that eventually land up in our stomach when we consume fish and seafood. The microplastic is toxic and it contains various cancer causing chemicals which basically is the real reason for deteriorating health of people worldwide. We need to understand this horrible truth and take corrective action.
Plastics dumped on land too break down into tiny pieces and are washed down water courses into rivers, lakes and seas. These microplastics are hugely problematic. They absorb other pollutants like legacy pesticides and carcinogenic hydrocarbons from the ocean or aquatic environment. These microscopic toxic bombs tend to be mistaken for food and ingested by zooplankton. Plankton are the foundations of any aquatic food chain, and plastics has found a way to contaminate that.
As a first step to reduce the flow of plastic to the oceans, countries all over the world must ban the use of plastic on the beaches. No product must be sold on the beach that is packed in plastic. People must drink water from glass bottles, beer bottles must be converted to water bottles. Nobody must use any plastic bag along the beach, instead use cloth or jute bags. No cool drinks must be sold in plastic bottles, instead it must be served in glass bottles. Anyone polluting beaches must be fined heavily, this must be made mandatory. NO PLASTIC BEACHES are the need of the hour. All food items sold on the beach must be wrapped in cloth or Aluminium foil so that we do not depend on plastic anymore.
Everyday we are killing thousands of birds animals and marine organisms due to dumping of plastic waste into the oceans. We need to stop this at any cost to save our future generations.
How to destroy Plastic waste from India Completely?
Coming to India let me give you my opinion on how to destroy plastic waste from our villages and cities completely. What we need is will power and awareness. My aim is to spread awareness about plastic waste among people and help them to recycle the same every day.
India produces over 25,000 tonnes of plastic waste per day out of which only 60 percent is recycled.
The only way India can eliminate waste plastic is by creating awareness about the same among general public and reduce the use of plastic as much as possible. Instead of plastic carry bag, use jute bags. Instead of drinking water from plastic pet bottles use glass bottle. Avoid the use of plastic as much as possible at home. Never drink tea or coffee from plastic cups, instead use ceramics/earthen cups. We need a Campaign named “NO PLASTIC LIFE” among us so that people use minimum amount of plastic in their daily life, this can improve our health a lot by stopping the entry of microplastics in our food chain.
Role of students to clean up India of waste plastic:
Young students from school and colleges can do a lot in cleaning up waste plastic. I recently read in a blog that kids from school in Manipur bring waste plastic to school and they get paid for the same. This model can be replicated all over India, where kids, college students bring waste plastic from homes and it is collected from schools/colleges, then taken to recycling plants to be recycled. The students will get money and grace mark for collecting waste plastic and cleaning the environment.
A school in Assam-India, replaced Tuition With Plastic Waste And The Town Was Transformed, read full article
The second major step that India need to take is to start thousands of plastic recycling plants all over India and try to recycle as much plastic as possible. Pet bottles can be crushed washed and made into the form of flakes which can be used to make plastic thread from which various value added products can be made.
Any other form of plastic (HDPE/LDPE) can be crushed to be made into the form of granules, that can be used to make any kind of plastic products using plastic injection moulding machines. This can create huge business opportunities and create millions of jobs in urban and rural India. Right from plastic waste collection to making and selling value added products, we can create lakhs of entrepreneurs and give jobs to millions of people directly and indirectly.
Recycled plastic can be used in road construction. India has paved more than 100,000 km of roads mixing molten plastic with bitumen. Here the gravel (stone pieces) are coated with molten plastic and then it is mixed with bitumen @ ration 9:1. For every 9 tons of bitumen, one ton of recycled plastic can be mixed for paving roads.
Prof.R.Vasudevan, This 72-year-old professor from Madurai’s Thiagarajar College of Engineering has discovered an ingenious way to build durable roads using plastic waste. He is known as the plastic man of India. He gave this patented technology free to Indian government and got award also for the same.
The entire process is very simple. The plastic waste material is first shredded to a particular size using a shredding machine. The aggregate mix is heated at 165°c and transferred to the mixing chamber, and the bitumen is heated to 160°c to result in good binding. It is important to monitor the temperature during heating.
The shredded plastic waste is then added to the aggregate. It gets coated uniformly over the aggregate within 30 to 60 seconds, giving an oily look. The plastic waste coated aggregate is mixed with hot bitumen and the resulting mix is used for road construction. The road laying temperature is between 110°c to 120°c. The roller used has a capacity of 8 tons. Read full article
“To lay one kilometre of road, you need one tonne of plastic,” explained Vasudevan. “This translates to 10 lakh plastic carry bags. Today, India has 41 lakh km of road, and we do not have enough plastic to convert all of them into plastic roads. So we should not have any problem in disposing of plastics in the future using this technology. Another benefit of using plastic to build roads is that it reduces the quantity of bitumen needed, thereby bringing down costs.
To know more about Plastic man. Prof.R.Vasudevan, visit the website: http://www.indianplasticman.com
Hyderabad city in India is already using tiles made from Plastic waste to pave walk ways, read details here
Now days people have start building homes also from recycled plastic, waste plastic bricks and panels are becoming common everyday. In African countries also this trend is growing day by day.
Waste plastic can be convereted to petrol and diesel using a process called depolymerisation. Mr.Satish Kumar from Hyderabad is already doing the same, see details here.
This can be a wonderful opportunity for budding entrepreneurs of future, where we can recycle every bit of plastic waste into fuels such as petrol, diesel etc.
The possibilities of Recycling plastic waste is unlimited, what we need is an open mind to solve the problem. Recycling plastic waste can generate huge amount of employment in both rural and urban India, we need to support budding entrepreneurs to set up plastic recycling plants.
If you are interested to set up plastic recycling plants anywhere in India, feel free to call me at: 9798404042 (whatsapp), Mr.Gijo Vijayan. I can help you set up plastic recycling plants anywhere in India or abroad that can process 300kg/hour to 2000kg/hour waste plastic. Email: sa...@glaubenimpex.com
