Plastics - Part 2

00:00:03: Substance.

00:00:04: Stories about the stuff

00:00:06: that shapes our world.

00:00:09: So I found that, you know, rather than means talking about criticizing governments or other places, why can't I do something?

00:00:16: Just be part of a solution rather than be part of a problem.

00:00:19: So that's how, that's how I also give me a kind of confidence that, okay, people are doing some amazing stuff.

00:00:24: So I can't also do something in that direction.

00:00:27: I think as we are facing a lot of challenges as a society at the moment, like climate change, pollution, also biodiversity, what I really like to work on is on practical solutions and on developing circular economy business models.

00:00:56: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

00:00:59: That's a familiar mantra.

00:01:00: Every child basically learns in kindergarten.

00:01:03: It's a guiding principle for how we should deal with our scarce, finite resources.

00:01:08: Now in practice, this might mean consider if you really need something before buying it, using what you already have, repairing things instead of replacing them.

00:01:18: But no matter how hard we try, sometimes you gotta go to the store and buy something.

00:01:23: It could be a new car, a new washing machine, or something small like a bottle of water.

00:01:29: But wouldn't it be wonderful knowing that the thing that you bought didn't require a lot of those finite resources to make?

00:01:36: that it was made from recycled materials and can one day, when it reaches the end of its life, be recycled again.

00:01:44: That wouldn't just feel good.

00:01:46: It could be a real contribution to a sustainable way of living for now and for our future.

00:01:54: Certainly the moments of when I had my own children, I have two kids, is I think when I thought a lot about the future and how we as humans on Earth are actually living how many resources we are using and what we are handing over to the next generation.

00:02:09: I'm Joe Hansen, and this is Substance, a podcast about the discoveries and innovations in chemistry and beyond, helping us build a sustainable society for the future.

00:02:21: In short, we tell stories about stuff that shapes our world.

00:02:25: And in this episode, we're continuing our exploration about plastics and how they can become part of a circular

00:02:32: economy.

00:02:36: Research defines circularity by saying there are ten R strategies and they range from refuse, rethink, reduce.

00:02:45: So actually all of the things that are about using less materials then into repair.

00:02:52: remanufacture etc.

00:02:53: and only then our strategy number nine and ten are actually recycling and recovery.

00:02:59: So that actually shows you that there is a whole breadth of circular economy strategies and recycling is only at the very end of the strategies.

00:03:08: This is Talke Schafranek.

00:03:10: She is the director of circular economy at BASF and it's her job to design the company's circular economy strategy and to try to actually make it work on the business side.

00:03:21: I really feel I have a lot of possibilities to change and to move BSF forward in that transformation, but also to really develop solutions for circular economy, and that's a really great feeling.

00:03:34: BSF is quite a big player, obviously.

00:03:37: We have innovative power, but we also have, of course, responsibility to change our processes, our resource intake, and in my position, I can really improve, I think, the current situation and work on that transformation for circular economy.

00:03:52: How can the plastics industry become more circular?

00:03:56: How can we keep plastics out of the landfill and turn them into new valuable products?

00:04:01: Now, it's one thing to think about this in places like South Korea, Slovakia or Germany.

00:04:07: These are places where around half of municipal waste is recycled, where properly disposing of garbage and separating your recycling is not just a recommendation, It's actually the law.

00:04:18: But recycling is a totally different undertaking in places where modern waste management systems don't exist.

00:04:25: Places like

00:04:26: rural India.

00:04:29: India has the largest population of any country on earth.

00:04:34: Currently, there are about one point five billion Indian people living on the subcontinent.

00:04:39: And just like everyone on earth, they produce waste.

00:04:43: Of course, Per capita, they produce much less than people in western countries.

00:04:48: The average American produces two point six kilograms of municipal waste per day.

00:04:54: In Germany, that rate is still one point six kilograms per person.

00:04:59: But the average Indian produces significantly less garbage somewhere between a hundred and twenty three and seven hundred grams per person per day.

00:05:08: But with a population that big, that's still a serious amount of garbage.

00:05:13: And in many places, especially in rural parts of India, villages and small towns just don't have the infrastructure to properly separate, recycle, or compost the waste that they collect.

00:05:25: That means potentially valuable resources end up in a landfill.

00:05:30: And in other areas in India, there's not even an official waste collection system in place at all.

00:05:36: Here's Jabir Karat describing the situation in his home state

00:05:40: of Kerala,

00:05:41: in the south of India.

00:05:43: a state with about thirty million inhabitants.

00:05:46: Most of the households in rural areas.

00:05:48: they were just burning their backyards or some of them even used to deposit in the water bodies.

00:05:54: That's a normal practice.

00:05:55: So there was no waste collection practice at all, especially rural or semi-urban part of the state where I am.

00:06:01: Only in very big cities, like three to four places, I would say maybe a ten to twenty percentage location, there was a waste collection system.

00:06:09: So people just used to burn or bury the waste, or put it in the water bodies.

00:06:13: That's a normal practice.

00:06:15: when I had started.

00:06:17: Javier saw a problem, but also a business opportunity.

00:06:21: Beginning in twenty fourteen, he devoted his life to solving the garbage situation in Kerala.

00:06:28: When he began, official waste disposal facilities were seriously underperforming.

00:06:32: A lot of waste ended up in open dump sites.

00:06:36: The problem grew and within the last couple of years has grown into a full-size crisis.

00:06:42: Not just in Kerala, but in many states and cities all over India.

00:06:47: These mountains of waste.

00:06:49: are the daily workplace for many informal waste collectors.

00:06:54: They aren't employed by anyone, they don't have an official mandate, but they know that there is value in some things that people throw away.

00:07:03: So every day they pick through mountains of garbage and search for things that they can sell.

00:07:09: Things like old nails, copper wires, or hard plastic containers.

00:07:14: These workers often don't have any protective equipment, no masks, no gloves, even though combing through mixed garbage in open landfills is incredibly dangerous.

00:07:26: And if the unbearable smell doesn't make you faint, the toxic fermentation gases or methane leaks just might.

00:07:36: So Javier sought two problems, a waste crisis and poverty.

00:07:41: And he envisioned one solution to solve them both, a company that would collect waste from people's houses properly sort it and recycle it.

00:07:51: If everything went to plan, his workers would have fair wages and safe working conditions, and the open landfills would be a thing of the past.

00:08:00: But he first needed some hands-on experience, so he decided to work as a garbage collector for eight months.

00:08:07: Every day starts with around six a.m.

00:08:09: and there was a tri-cycle.

00:08:11: It's a battery operated tri-cycle.

00:08:12: So the two women along both side of me and I used to ride the tri-cycle.

00:08:18: So we go to every individual houses to collect.

00:08:21: It was a door-to-door waste collection program.

00:08:23: We were trying to, I mean some others were trying to, in terms of implement, especially informal people.

00:08:29: formalizing some of the informal people.

00:08:31: So I was the driver and I was the accountant guy, you know, and so ideas that, so we start with six AM and go to, we were supposed to cover two hundred households.

00:08:40: Around five PM, you know, we used to finish the work.

00:08:43: And in midway, you know, like around twelve to two, we had a break also.

00:08:47: So that's where the work was being arranged.

00:08:49: Jabeer spent nine hours every day riding his tricycle, going from door to door to collect garbage in the thick, oppressive heat of South India.

00:08:59: But Jabeer is an eternal optimist.

00:09:02: I have studied Indian history as a major in terms of my undergraduate and post-graduation.

00:09:09: So, post the college, I was figuring out what to do for the rest of my life specifically.

00:09:14: And usually my peers in my college, they either went for some higher studies like post-doctorate, etc.

00:09:21: So, I was more of an outdoor person.

00:09:23: I realized that I should figure out something interesting, something unique.

00:09:27: Jubeer applied for a fellowship and spent two years working on improving education programs in the slums of Mumbai, India's largest city.

00:09:36: And that's where he experienced firsthand how that mega city deals with its garbage.

00:09:42: The good part of the city was always clean, but it was actually the burden of the city's waste was mostly on the low income communities or marginalized part of it, you know.

00:09:50: So it was only far away from the cities.

00:09:53: That's how they used to clean.

00:09:54: Actually shifting one problem from one place to another problem.

00:09:57: It was not resolving it.

00:09:59: In the wealthy parts of Mumbai, where designer stores and fancy restaurants line the streets, the city was collecting the garbage.

00:10:07: But that garbage was dumped in areas where less fortunate people lived.

00:10:12: In some places, like India's capital city, Delhi, the city has grown so much that the giant open landfills are now engulfed by poor residential areas with significant health threats for the nearby residents.

00:10:26: Those dump sites release toxic chemicals into the groundwater and the air.

00:10:31: Flammable gases released by the garbage lead to fires which lower the air quality and slowly poison the people living around it.

00:10:43: The garbage problem wasn't solved just because in some areas of the city garbage trucks were picking up the trash.

00:10:49: The problem was simply moved to a different location.

00:10:52: And while people in India weren't producing as much garbage per person as, say, the United States or Germany, the Indian waste management system was overrun.

00:11:03: According to estimates from twenty twenty two, about one third of solid waste in India ends up in the environment or is picked up by one of the approximately one point five million waste pickers who are dealing with severe working conditions, no protective labor laws and the never ending uncertainty if on any given day they will find something valuable and make money.

00:11:27: Those two years and the largest city in India, that give me a lot of exposure to the hard realities of cities.

00:11:33: Most importantly, you know, I came across some really good work people are doing, especially as a social entrepreneurship as a concept, right?

00:11:40: I've seen a lot of, though they're on a small scale, a lot of individuals has been trying their own way to solve a different set of problems, whether it's water, whether it's waste, you know, whether it's any health care, etc.

00:11:52: So I found that, you know, rather than means talking about criticizing governments or other places.

00:11:58: Why can't I do something in, you know, just be part of a solution rather than be part of a problem.

00:12:03: So that's how, that's how I also give me a good confidence that, okay, people are doing some amazing stuff.

00:12:08: So I can't also do something, you know, in that direction.

00:12:12: After eight months as a garbage collector, Jabir founded his company Greenworms.

00:12:18: Here's the idea behind it.

00:12:20: Collect garbage, sort it and recycle it.

00:12:23: create a safe working environment for his employees, and pay them a competitive wage.

00:12:28: But people were skeptical it would work.

00:12:31: When I started, a lot of people said, okay, they had never seen such a program in the state or, you know, and everybody was skeptical whether it will be successful or not.

00:12:40: So, both they were actually, you know, skeptical about its technical aspects of it and as well as the financial aspects of it, whether that can be converted to a business model.

00:12:48: So, you can say I was one of the pioneers in the state of Kerala.

00:12:52: Those days, you know, there was no such systems at all.

00:12:55: Javier deeply believed that it was possible to help both the environment and help marginalize people in need of a secure paycheck.

00:13:05: But still, things didn't always go smoothly.

00:13:08: It took me, you know, four or five years to stabilize it.

00:13:12: So maybe I might have thought about hundreds of times to leave this because technically it may be working, but financially it was not working.

00:13:19: The so-called co-founders had left me, the first investors had left me.

00:13:24: And so there was a lot of challenges and, you know, troubles in those initial days.

00:13:28: But yeah, it's one or the other direction.

00:13:30: I was learning every challenge and obstacles and I was confident if I can get through this, there is a big opportunity.

00:13:38: And so you can say that persistence and most importantly the passion so much it was.

00:13:43: day and night I used to think about waste.

00:13:45: For his business to take off, he needed an army of committed garbage collectors.

00:13:51: Initially, when I started collecting waste, there were a lot of women who had no jobs.

00:13:55: And this was an available workforce.

00:13:57: That was the concept I started.

00:13:59: And later I realized that this is a very good workforce in terms of, you know, it's much more easy to train them, you know, they're much more disciplined people.

00:14:07: So women has come as a right choice for, as in terms of a priority workforce also.

00:14:13: They become the key pillars of my organization.

00:14:16: So, eighty percentage of people are women now.

00:14:19: Jibir also faced plenty of confusion as to why someone who's earned a degree from the prestigious Delhi University was devoting his life to

00:14:43: garbage.

00:14:45: When Jibir started out, there were two ways he made money.

00:14:48: He would charge households and businesses a small fee for picking up their garbage, which was cheaper than what they would have to pay for incinerating it.

00:14:56: And he was selling the recyclable fraction of the waste to different recyclers all over India.

00:15:01: Today, his two streams of revenue have expanded into seven.

00:15:06: Jabir sells some of the waste as an alternative fuel to cement factories so they can replace coal.

00:15:12: And he even opened a thrift store where some of the textiles he collects are being sold.

00:15:16: We have enough clothes for the six generations to come in the economy, you know, six times of clothes.

00:15:22: That's too much fashion, you know, fast fashion and all.

00:15:25: So whatever collect we collect, around fifteen percentage is being reverable.

00:15:29: I mean, someone else is ready to buy and I mean, someone ready to use it.

00:15:33: So we run a lot of thrift stores, you know, swap programs and various ways.

00:15:37: So whatever good clothes we collect from urban areas, we sell it in the rural areas with the very cheapest way.

00:15:42: Javier

00:15:43: is constantly on the lookout for new opportunities to reuse and recycle the treasures his garbage collectors bring

00:15:49: home.

00:15:49: See, first, of course, you know, I mean, whether it's plastics or paper or metals or electronics or textiles, it's all resources, right?

00:15:59: It's all some natural resources which was extracted to make this.

00:16:03: And what if we can convert water bottles to another water bottle?

00:16:07: There is so much carbon emission savings, there is so much natural resources you don't need to extract again.

00:16:13: So we're kind of working on how can you convert, because that's the one resource which was already in the market in the... economy.

00:16:19: How can you again make it back to the economy?

00:16:22: I think this is so much possible.

00:16:25: The collaboration with Greenworms started with discussions between our colleagues in India in the corporate social responsibility team.

00:16:33: And then they pulled in our plastic experts based in India.

00:16:38: And the team then early on defined what they want to work on.

00:16:41: They defined that the challenge of polyurethane footwear waste would be of interest.

00:16:47: Also because we work with footwear manufacturers and they actually wanted to find a solution of what to do with the old shoe soles basically and also with the production waste that is there.

00:16:59: And that's how the idea basically started.

00:17:02: Take a look at the bottom of your sneakers or a pair of sandals you have around.

00:17:06: The sole of that footwear is almost certainly made from a plastic called polyurethane.

00:17:11: The BISF team was looking for a pilot project to show that this polyurethane could be recycled and given a new life.

00:17:19: In their eyes, Greenworms was an ideal partner because they were already in the business of collecting old shoes.

00:17:25: Like plastics, we collect shoes also from households.

00:17:28: now and it comes to our Foodware Recovery Facility.

00:17:32: We call it Foodware Recovery Facility in which this is being segregated to different breeds of like a rubber, PVC, PU, TPU, EVA and many fractions of it.

00:17:42: Then we remove the upper layer and you know, salt separately.

00:17:45: The salt is the crux of it.

00:17:47: Then goes to a shredding actually.

00:17:48: It is being shredded into very fine powders.

00:17:51: Then it is being compressed in a compressed molding machine.

00:17:55: So that's a typical process.

00:17:57: And it's just not the post-consumer foodware waste.

00:18:00: We even use post-industrial because they're all making a new pair of shoes also, you know, around three to five percent.

00:18:07: There is a wastage also.

00:18:09: I think

00:18:09: it's quite interesting because what will come out of the recycling process is a product that can actually then be used in schools as flooring, for example, as flooring for the playgrounds in schools.

00:18:21: And that way you can raise the awareness about circularity for the children.

00:18:25: You can also promote community engagement, so it has a lot of positive elements.

00:18:30: And what I really like about the project in particular is it will also create new jobs, particularly for women.

00:18:37: There will be a new recycling unit built, I think, at Greenworms, which is going to be set up in Kerala in the south of India.

00:18:45: And that's, of course, a very positive sign, a positive outcome of the project.

00:18:49: The

00:18:49: collaboration with Greenworms is just one of many examples where BASF is supporting the transformation to a circular economy.

00:18:57: For example, BASF found a solution for turning old polyamide textiles into new clothing.

00:19:04: With its innovation, Inditex has produced a jacket that's made entirely from old clothes, it's recyclable, and it was launched as a pilot product by the fashion company Zara.

00:19:15: in.

00:19:16: We see a business opportunity in circular economy, and sometimes I would phrase it in saying there is even a business risk in not acting at all.

00:19:25: And as BSF, we have developed a circular economy program.

00:19:29: We have developed a circular economy strategy, including targets, because we believe in the business opportunities in circular economy.

00:19:38: We back that up with the targets in circular economy.

00:19:41: We call them loop solutions.

00:19:43: We want to double our sales with loop solutions by twenty thirty and reach ten billion.

00:19:49: To reach this ambitious goal, the company evaluates how every single product they sell scores in terms of circularity and sustainability.

00:19:58: As BASF we have around forty thousand different products.

00:20:02: And we are tracking the system with the loop solutions within our triple S, so sustainable solutions steering system.

00:20:09: So we always know how many circular products we sell and how we are actually advancing with the process.

00:20:15: The circular economy doesn't start when a product is disposed of.

00:20:20: A product's circularity is considered from the very beginning.

00:20:24: So we think about the circularity also when designing products with customers.

00:20:30: We call that design for circularity, and it's quite an important principle for us when working with customers.

00:20:36: If you, for example, take a shoe, a sneaker, and you imagine that you would design the sole, the upper part, and the laces all out of the same material, which in our case would be polyurethane, and we develop there a solution together with Adidas, which we call the one material shoe.

00:20:53: then that can be recycled much easier because it's all made out of one material compared to mixed materials, which Adidas then calls made to be remade, for example.

00:21:03: Achieving the dream of a circular economy would mean that we stop using finite natural resources and use renewable resources instead, or figure out a way to use stuff that would traditionally be thought of as waste.

00:21:20: Currently, the largest part of the raw materials that go into BASF's giant steam-cracking facility are fossil fuels.

00:21:28: Its BASF experts' job to find out which renewable materials could replace those fossil fuels.

00:21:35: I think one important part was done by having a unit in our purchasing department that specifically scouts for renewable-based raw materials that we can take in.

00:21:48: that we can use to replace fossil raw materials and a group that is scouting for recycled-based materials.

00:21:56: In the end, it's all carbon, so we basically need carbon and that can be produced from growing something.

00:22:02: or that can be used from taking existing product, breaking it down into the individual molecules and taking the carbon, or it can be used from fossils.

00:22:12: If you listened to episode two of this podcast, you already learned about this technology.

00:22:17: It's called chemical recycling, where plastics are broken down into their basic molecular building blocks and can be reformed into new raw material.

00:22:27: It works for many plastics that cannot be recycled with other methods.

00:22:31: In the end, the transformation to a circular economy will depend on a combination of new technologies like these, alongside better methods of collecting and sorting waste to make sure that nothing that's recyclable ends up in a landfill.

00:22:46: Javier's progress on this matter has been tremendous in Kerala and has visibly changed the state for the better.

00:22:53: We shut down all the dump sites.

00:22:55: Wherever we had started, we kind of closed the dump sites.

00:22:59: So no more waste is going to landfill.

00:23:01: A hundred percentage we are able to recover for either for reuse or repurpose or in terms of either to recycling or converting to fuel.

00:23:10: So all the landfills.

00:23:12: that open dumpsides are shut down, so you can say a visible thing.

00:23:16: Second things you know you would see in the streets etc.

00:23:19: you know the major towns etc.

00:23:21: streets are much more cleaner and better.

00:23:23: so communities appreciating that's what you know when I started.

00:23:26: you know so initial days convincing the villages and all the village you know elected members and officials were challenging.

00:23:34: nowadays a lot of people comes to us because they see that change very visible change.

00:23:38: so you can say from the environment you know visible changes is and all the land all the open dump sites has been shut down.

00:23:46: So those we are really proud about it.

00:23:48: Jabir and Greenworms have brought striking change to the rural areas of Kerala.

00:23:54: But there are many other places in India that are still grappling with ever-growing mountains of garbage.

00:24:01: So Jabir is just getting started.

00:24:04: See I started with three hundred KG of waste collection in the year of two thousand fourteen.

00:24:09: Today I am doing two hundred fifty metric tons of waste per day.

00:24:13: I used to collect only fifty households, I mean fifty commercial establishments when I started.

00:24:19: Today I'm servicing two point three million households.

00:24:23: That's a thing.

00:24:25: So in terms of numbers, I'll do look at it in terms of I wanted to collect service to maybe the next three, four years.

00:24:31: I want to use service to ten million households, that's one number.

00:24:35: And secondly, I want to directly employ two thousand people.

00:24:38: Now I am at eight hundred people, right?

00:24:41: And I'm working with around seven thousand waste collectors, informal.

00:24:44: So I want to work with around twenty thousand waste collectors.

00:24:47: So I do, you know, both in terms of quantity of the waste and number of job create, as well as, you know, and I'm at nine million dollar revenue.

00:24:56: I want to do a, you know, a thirty million dollar business in the next three years.

00:25:01: On the other side of the world, Talke Schafranek is pushing BASF's transformation towards a circular economy forward, one project at a time.

00:25:11: Circular economy can only happen if we involve the whole ecosystem.

00:25:16: So it's really this system thinking and system acting that's important for us.

00:25:21: I mean, in a linear system, you have the supplier relationship, you have the customer, but in a circular economy, you have logistics, you have... collection, recycling, certification, etc.

00:25:33: And to set up such ecosystems, we really, I think we really need a lot of different competencies compared to the linear world or the linear setup.

00:25:41: So I think, you know, if I had not collected this waste, where would I have this end up, right?

00:25:46: It would surely have contaminated the soil or water or air.

00:25:50: So I think in every day I'm actually helping in my own way, I would say in a very little way to make this planet a better place for the generation.

00:25:58: So that's actually, you know, that's a single motivation.

00:26:01: It makes me to wake up every day and work.

00:26:05: That's it for this episode of Substance.

00:26:08: In a future episode, We will dive deeper into the topic of textile recycling.

00:26:14: This has been Substance.

00:26:16: Stories about the stuff that shapes our world.

00:26:20: Substance is a podcast by BASF, produced by a territory agency in collaboration with Wake Word and me, Joe Hansen.

00:26:29: Research and scripting by Daniel Sedbrook, Claudia Doyle, Hardy Röder, and Joe Hansen.