Ashok Chaturvedi, chairman and managing director, UFlex, shared his insights to build circularity in multi-layered plastics packaging at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) board meeting, held on 30 November 2022, at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), New York. UFlex is credited to be the first company in the world to recycle mixed plastic waste (since 1995) from its recycling facilities in Noida, NCR-India and has been recognized for its efforts by the Davos Recycling Forum and by the Government of India.
At the AEPW board meeting in New York, Chaturvedi made a strong case for the continued and ubiquitous use of multi-layer mixed plastic (MLP) that provides a barrier that is required for packaging of a number of essential items including food products; enables high-speed packing; are cost-effective, and are 100% recyclable.
Chaturvedi’s presentation to the AEPW Board included a virtual walkthrough of the UFlex recycling facilities at Noida, Poland and Mexico to recycle and upcycle post-consumer multi-layer mixed plastic waste into value-added household and industrial plastic products such as dustbins, outdoor furniture, and more. UFlex runs an advanced injection molding facility at its Noida site and this was established to recycle granules and to demonstrate various possibilities to the molding industry. Today, decorative, functional, engineering parts, household and office products, and hundreds of other articles are being manufactured with recycled granules at UFlex’s recycling facilities.
UFlex says that it has recycled more than half a million tons of multi-layer mixed plastic waste so far and has spent more than 20 million US dollars in the last financial year at its Poland and Mexico sites.
As an industry leader in building sustainable flexible packaging solutions, UFlex runs a global sustainability initiative called ‘Project Plastic Fix’. This initiative is aligned with the company’s sustainability approach of 4Rs to tackle the challenge of reducing stock and flow of plastic waste in the environment, i.e., reduce plastic at source by manufacturing and using films made from PCR; recycle via upcycling and downcycling of multi-layer mixed plastic and PET containers, covers, other articles and bottles; reuse as source substitution via pyrolysis; return to the planet in the form of biomass, if the plastic waste remains uncollected.
Chaturvedi volunteered to provide technical knowledge and related support to any organization or country that would like to replicate and scale recycling infrastructure to pivot to a circular economy. He urged brand owners and civic bodies across regions and countries to collaborate and strengthen the recycling value chain.
