Symphony Environmental India highlighted biodegradable plastic technology at the Plastindia 2023 exhibition. The UK-headquartered company is a leading developer of technology to make ordinary plastics biodegradable, and a range of other plastic technologies to protect against microbes, insects, fire, and many other threats. Symphony has a diverse and growing customer base and has established itself as a strong global business with over 70 distributors around the world.
“At the Plastindia exhibition, we are showcasing our two distinctive brands – d2w and d2p. We have been doing research for more than 27 years in the field of additives to make plastic products biodegradable. Today we have a presence in over 100 countries,” said Sunil Panwar, CEO, Symphony Environmental India.
d2w is a biodegradable plastic technology to reduce the problem of plastic pollution in the environment, by turning ordinary plastic, at the end of its service life and in the presence of oxygen, into biodegradable materials. It is then no longer a plastic and can be bio-assimilated by bacteria and fungi on land or sea, which recycle it back into nature, leaving no microplastics or toxic residues.
“The problem with plastic recycling is collecting material from the open environment, which is usually not practicable and has serious limitations on recyclability. Plastics that don’t get recycled, end up in open environments – landfills, water bodies (rivers, oceans), drainage systems, etc. We, therefore, concluded that the only way to deal with plastic in the open environment is to stop thinking that we can prevent it in the short to medium term, especially in the developing world, but to address our minds to what happens to it once it gets into the open environment. For this reason, we have created d2w technology,” Panwar said. d2w is a masterbatch that, at little or no extra cost, turns ordinary plastic at the end of its useful life – in the presence of oxygen – into a material with a different molecular structure.
In addition, Symphony has developed a range of additives, concentrates and masterbatches marketed under its d2p brand, which can be incorporated in a wide variety of plastic and non-plastic products to provide protection against many different types of microbes, insects, odors, fouling and fire, and to reduce the wastage of food.
“All our solutions are tested as per global standards and there it has passed the tests very well. The test mostly includes ASTM D6954, which is the most established global standard to test the biodegradable levels of plastics,” Panwar said.
Speaking about sustainability, Panwar said, “Sustainability involves many things simultaneously – first, it involves educating people. Education plays a very vital role in sustainability in terms of plastic waste management. If people are educated about the importance of segregating their waste at its origin, then we can very effectively deal with this problem. Sustainability cannot be an industry-driven initiative. It has to be an individually-driven initiative – every citizen of the country should feel responsible about sustainability.”