Industry Comes Together to launch Asia’s Largest Packaging Waste Management Venture

Speaking on the occasion, Vimal Kedia, President, PACE said, “This unique venture, will focus on closing the material loops for multiple types of packaging materials and shall bring together 60% of plastics value chain in India. It will bring convergence to multiple solutions being put by producers individually.”

New Delhi: To address the growing concern of plastic waste in India, 31 leading companies in the industry have joined forces to jointly launch Asia’s largest, first-of-its-kind, producer led and owned venture for creating a formal plastic circular economy in the country. Together, the participating companies will mobilize and converge assets, resources, and investment upwards of INR 1000 Crore. Ahmed ElSheikh, President PepsiCo India, T. Krishnakumar, President Coca-Cola India and South West Asia and Angelo George, CEO Bisleri launched the new producer led venture “Karo Sambhav – Closing Material Loops,” to create an efficient value chain for collection of post-consumer packaging and optimize material recycling processes. Some of the other companies that have committed to joining hands for this venture include Diageo, Parle Agro, Cavin Kare, Manjushree, Reliance Industries, SC Johnson, IVL-Dhunseri, Pearl Drinks, Varun Beverages Limited and Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited. Action Alliance for Recycling Beverage Cartons is also supporting the venture. The approach to setting up a new producer led venture was developed and incubated by Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE) for over a year with the objective of developing a transformative system which enables inclusion, ethics, transparency, good governance and traceability of waste. Speaking on the occasion, Vimal Kedia, President, PACE said, “This unique venture, will focus on closing the material loops for multiple types of packaging materials and shall bring together 60% of plastics value chain in India. It will bring convergence to multiple solutions being put by producers individually.” “Through our vision, World Without Waste, we want to ensure that all our packaging material goes for recycling and not to landfills. This is a journey that we must undertake with our peers in the industry to make it more tangible, rigorous and scalable. We’re happy to partake in the launch and subsequent operations of the new producer led venture” said, T. Krishnakumar, President Coca-Cola India and South West Asia. “At PepsiCo we have been striving to build a world where plastic never becomes waste. Today’s launch of Karo Sambhav is a landmark step by the industry to pool resources and bring much needed scale and efficiency to the plastic waste collection and recycling ecosystem. We believe this venture will bring the industry together to collectively commit and provide support in realizing Government’s vision of sustainable plastic waste management in the country” said, Ahmed ElSheikh, President PepsiCo India. “We are happy to be a part of this landmark venture where we are co-creating solutions for a sustainable future. This will enable set-up of state-of the-art sorting and recycling facilities across the country,” said Angelo George, CEO Bisleri Mr. Pranshu Singhal, who is leading the set-up of this new venture said, “The focus of this venture will be on developing an India-wide ecosystem for plastic waste management by creating win-win partnerships with stakeholders, and applying technology to bring transparency, traceability and scale.” "Plastics and packaging waste are most visible and escalating problem in India and globally, that require innovative partnerships and industry solutions. The PACE initiative for an industry led venture to organise plastics waste recycling is timely and welcomed, which UNIDO stands ready to partner with," said Rene Van Berkel, UNIDO Representative India. The venture plans to have a network of 125 material recovery facilities across the country which will work with 2500 aggregators over the next 3 years. The project will be scaled up in phases and focus on the following aspects.

• Alignment with the Government’s “Swachh Bharat Mission” and a zero-waste movement
• Enabling utilization of secondary materials post recycling
• Ensuring that no recyclable packaging material ends up in landfills by 2025
• Transforming the linear value chain of packaging material into a robust and efficient recyclable material circular economy

About PACE Packaging Association for Clean Environment is an industry body to promote the benefits of PET packaging for safe and clean environment. It advocates adoption of a voluntary code of conduct relating to the manufacture, packaging, recycling using distribution and sale of PET packaging in India.