Relevance Of ‘Reincarnation’ In Circular Economy
Recyclability is not a new subject. While discussing the making of glass, experts indicate that its main source, quartz sand is depleting day by day which is the third-largest resource being used on the planet earth after air and water. Post the pandemic, the whole geopolitical system has changed leading to the need of relloking at circular economy.
Acknowledging the recycling process as an opportunity, BW Businessworld organised BW Recycling Awards and Conclave 2022. As a part of its inaugural session, we saw multiple panels across topics with domain experts contributing their expertise. In a panel hosted by Dr Anjan Ray, Director, Indian Institute of Petroleum,Shalini Goyal Bhalla, Managing Director, International Council for Circular Economy asserts, “In today’s times most of the economies are working towards recycling. Recycling is one of the opportunities but it is not the best value proposition that circular economy can bring in.” The shift in business models would be pertinent where the reverse supply chain and reusability would be built in, Bhalla highlights.
There was a lack of a proper mechanism for masses living in societies to return their waste to the industry instead of dumping garbage in drains or land. There is an urgent need for India to realize their advantage on being on a supplier end, unlike western countries. Every country has a unique behavioural feature, so as India has. To be future-ready, recyclability has to play a very important role.
On a lighter note, Anjan Ray, Director, Indian Institute of Petroleum points out, “One of the peculiar problems in India is, everybody thinks that this is someone else’ job and nobody does it.” Any atom that generates as a part of any human activity, all we need is a good collection system and a good policy that enables a collector and a convertor to make some money in the process. “Collection, conversion, policy ecosystem coupled with user behaviour is all we need,” Indian Institute of Petroleum’s Ray summarises.
When asked as to what can be done to encourage people to collect recyclable commodities at the end to realise the complete loop of circular economy to which Rajesh Khosla, President & CEO, AGI Glaspac responds, “We are not doing this for the sake of profit instead we are doing it for our commitment to sustainability. Yes, if we get clean scrap, probably there will be less load on functioning units and lesser use of energy resources in the process.”
