We Can Teach Our Students To Live A Low-Carbon Lifestyle

Recycling is reported throughout human history but has come a long way since the time of Plato when humans reused broken tools and pottery when materials were scarce. Now waste management and recycling have been evolving earlier the emphasis was on health concerns from recycling, the focus subsequently moved to improper waste management leads to a lot of pollution in addition to being a health hazard.

In light of the above acknowledgment, BW Businessworld organised BW Recycling for Greener Tomorrow Conclave & Awards 2022. In a panel hosted by session chair, Suneel Pandey Director- Environment & Waste Management, TERI said, “Gradually there was a realization there is also a possibility of resource recovery from recycling the waste, maybe not for the first user but some value can be derived from it so the focus shifted to resource recovery and finally we are looking at climate benefits and closing the material loop,”.

The circular economy is currently being talked about by everyone, A circular economy is an approach where materials for new products originate from old products. It’s a systemic approach designed to benefit all stakeholders, businesses, society, and the environment. Pratap Raju, Founding Member, Climate Collective said “Investor interest has increased in the circular economy, the investment in CleanTech startups has been astounding over the last 8 years, from $400M a year in 2013 to $60B last year. There is a large focus on sustainable mobility but when I talk to a lot of investors the interest is also in the circular economy”.

Rahul Nainani , Co-Founder & CEO, Recircle which is a resource recovery startup said “We launched our company in 2015, and back then it was quite a struggle, first waste was something nobody wanted to talk about, be it, consumers, be it businesses, we were struggling to make people understand waste management was important. Things have changed now, what started from a waste management space has now moved on to a circular economy space. Today along with innovation we also see the collaborative effort that has come in, from a place where there no demand now there are companies that are coming to us for solutions”.

Mukul Sareen, Director, Dr. Bio-Hi tech International maker of biodegradable polymers said “Single-use plastic is a very big menace and the govt. is taking the right steps to curb the use of single-use plastics in the country. Single-use plastics take 1000 years to decompose while compositable plastics decompose in 6 months it surely going to add value for generations to come by changing the future that we want our kids to live in.”

Shubham Singh, Co-Creator & CEO, Craste, a startup that takes crop waste and creates sustainable packaging and particle boards for furniture and construction said “When we started in 2017, I was quite astonished as to why farmers are burning crop waste in India, when there is so much of potential in reusing this material. India generates 500M tonnes of crop waste, this is double the global plastic waste but we don’t see it as a problem we see it as a very big opportunity.”

Pratyush Panda, Sr. Director & Head Sustainability and CSR, LTI talking about CSR in India said “There is a grey space in our regulatory system, same companies that do CSR in a big way in Europe are not doing it in the same with their subsidiaries in India. There has to be a robust and clear Govt. Policy with respect to circular economy, SBTI and EPR etc. The Govt. could also provide some subsidies to enable companies in the initial period with cost of production.” “This should be a part of the school curriculum, so that we can teach our students to live a low-carbon lifestyle.” He added