This is with reference to the article, “Goa’s Plastic Saga – A Need to Recycle the Public Mindset” by Pachu Menon in the 22-28 April issue of Radiance Viewsweekly.
The author has highlighted the problem very well and is quite successful in raising a genuine concern among the readers for the tremendous amounts of plastic waste being generated in Goa.
However, the other leg of the article which should have spoken about solutions to the problem is very short and also, it does not raise much hope.
I am very concerned about the disposal of plastic bags which I carry home from the market on an everyday basis. With vegetables, groceries, fruits, tit-bit items, etc., vendors invariably hand over the stuff in a plastic bag and I conveniently carry it home, never ever remembering to carry cloth bag to the market for shopping.
Of late I was particularly concerned about finding out a method of quick and easy and safe disposal of plastic pannis at home level or may be making a small contraption on my own which can help me in disposing plastic bags and at the same time generating some heat or power or at least dispose it off safely so that I do not add to the already rising mountains of landfill in Ghazipur, Delhi – that is where our local garbage is dumped by the MCD.
After reading the above mentioned article in Radiance Viewsweekly, I searched the internet to find solutions to the problem of safe and easy disposal of plastic bags. I found two or three nice ones which I wish to give in brief below:
- Dehradun based Indian Institute of Petroleum, after a decade of research, has developed a process to convert plastic waste into either gasoline or diesel. With this method, 1 kilogram of plastic is converted into 750 millilitres of automotive grade gasoline. Due to nearly nil presence of sulphur in the produced fuel, it meets Euro III standard of purity. A vehicle using this fuel would be able to run 2 kilometres per litre.
However, there is a glitch. The plastic that is used as raw material is poly-ethylene and poly-propylene, and I would not know how to convert the ordinary plastic pannis that I get from the market into poly-ethylene and poly-propylene!!
At the same time, I might remark here that the government should have no such problem. Still, no plant has been set up in India for this – reasons best known to the government.
- Pune’s Medha Tadpatrikar has achieved a significant success in converting plastic waste to fuel – without the aid of a fancy laboratory or a scientific background. After an extensive research by her along with her friend, they have set up a plastic-to-fuel conversion machine in Pune.
The collected plastic waste is shredded and dumped into a reactor, a catalyst is added and the plastic is heated at 150 degrees Celsius. Gases like methane and propane are produced which are stored in separate gas tanks to be used as a heating source for the machine to function. After heating plastic gets converted into oil, and it is filtered and stored, ready for use.
By this method, 1 tonne of plastic can approximately produce 600 to 650 litres of fuel, 20 to 25% synthetic gases, 5 to 10% of residual char which can be used for road filler along with bitumen. They collect plastic from households in Pune and encourage people from all over India to send plastic waste via courier.
Here, I have a doubt. Won’t methane gas, if used for heating, produce toxic fumes? And, won’t sending plastic waste to Pune by courier involve costs?
However, the main bottlenecking is that extensive setting up of waste to fuel plants across the country is still awaited.
- There are professionals who turn waste plastic into fashionable handbags, purses, wallets, notebook covers, laptop bags, floor mats, etc.
They ‘upcycle’ plastic, that is, they reuse the trash in a creative form by forming into a useful product. They collect plastic pannis, wash them, dry them and shred them into thin strips. Then, these strips are woven together into a cloth or fabric using handlooms and charkhas. Once the fabric is ready, beautiful products are crafted out of it.
The drawback of this method is that the problem of disposal of plastic waste remains as it was earlier – only that it gets postponed.
My dream remains where it was. I still have not found a solution to my problem. My dream is to have a small gadget, which would lie beside my microwave oven, toaster, mixer-cum-grinder, etc. on the kitchen shelf, into which I can shove plastic pannis through one end and from its other end receive residue, which is degradable and therefore throwable in the dustbin, and on the top of this gadget, I place a heating plate to bake the rotis on.