Banyan Nation is India's first vertically integrated plastics recycling company that uses proprietary plastics cleaning technology to produce a near virgin quality recycled granules that brands can use to make new products and packaging.
ET OnlineVajipey does not reveal the current revenue for the company, but states it earns money from the sale of recycled plastic granules and Government contracts for the smart waste IoT platform.
Name of the Company: Banyan Nation Name of Founder(s): Mani Vajipey, Raj Madangopal City: Hyderabad Revenues: Undisclosed Headcount: Undisclosed Industry: Waste Management & Recycling
Funding: About $1 million
The ubiquitous nature of plastic means it is one of the most used materials in the world. From packaging materials, to making products, plastics are an indelible part of our life.
However, despite the utility, plastics are notorious in terms of pollution and are known for being difficult to recycle.
According to a report by the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with analytical support from McKinsey & Company, by 2050 oceans are expected to contain more plastics than fish (by weight), and the entire plastics industry will consume 20% of total oil production, and 15% of the annual carbon budget.
This, then, begs the question - what makes plastic so difficult to get rid of and why is it hard to recycle? It is actually a fallacy that plastics undergo recycling because in India, as across much of the world, most plastics are actually downcycled. Downcycling happens when recycled plastics are not at par with virgin plastic and are instead transformed to a much lower quality. Unlike paper, aluminum and glass, plastic cannot be easily converted into virgin or original state. For example, if a plastic bottle is sent for recycling, it cannot be converted into a plastic bottle, but will instead be downcycled into something like a carpet or synthetic clothing. Why is this a problem?
"Around 20 million tons per annum (TPA) of plastics is consumed in India for products and packaging. About 10 million TPA of the discarded plastic makes it into recycling streams, but over 80% is down-cycled into potentially contaminated low value products. The country, arguably loses $1.8 billion in direct value annually and over $20 billion over the lifetime of plastics because of a highly fragmented value chain and unscientific recycling processes that dominate the industry. Banyan is trying to integrate and formalize this value chain while innovating on plastics cleaning technology to help add value and extend the usable life of discarded plastics," says Mani Vajipey, Co-Founder and CEO, Banyan Nation.
Banyan manufactures Better Plastic, which is near virgin grade recycled plastic from post-consumer and post-industrial waste streams. Better Plastic offers brands, producers, OEMs and converters a competitive alternative to virgin plastic in price as well as quality.
Pet project Downcycling of plastics happen when they are contaminated with low value plastics, product remnants like oils, shampoos and moisture and in certain cases heavy metals such as lead, phosphorus, mercury and the like that are harmful to humans.
Big brands in Europe and America proudly declare that their products and packaging contain recycled plastics, but the same brands would never make such claims in India. Given the strict quality requirements in main stream product and packaging, global brands altogether avoid the use of recycled plastic in India.
Banyan Nation understood that supply chain and sourcing managers could not ensure traceability of materials and also could not trust the current system to deliver consistent quality and volumes of recycled plastics in India.
"Banyan Nation set out to change this. By taking a complete value chain approach we developed innovative technologies that clean plastics to eliminate all potential contaminants auto paints, inks, metals, labels, adhesives, dirt, oils," says Vajipey, 38.
Why it makes sense "We have convinced brands like Tata Motors that 'Circular Economy' - a model in which you use the waste generated by your products as raw materials in manufacturing - is the only way forward for sustainable manufacturing. Banyan has pioneered India's first 'bumper-to- bumper' closed loop recycling initiative with Tata Motors," says Vajipey.
The technology is not entirely new as Mazda Motor Corporation was the first auto manufacturer in the world to employ this in 2011. However, it is not a widely practiced norm as it is incredibly difficult to recycle an old bumper into a new bumper.
Firstly, plastic bumpers are usually made from polyurethane (PU), or polycarbonate (PC), and automotive companies add additives like polyphenylene oxide (PPO) to make it tougher and more durable. For recycled plastics to be used as bumpers, it needs to be free of contaminants like dirt and moisture. The cost associated with the process also has to be low. What makes it worse is that it is almost impossible to separate the paint from the body coloured bumpers that come with every car nowadays. That is up till now.
With Banyan Nation's tech, any car manufacturer can now recycle a bumper into a brand new one at competitive cost, thereby enabling more effective use of resources.
While this is only one use case, Banyan has the tech to recycle any plastic, something it has done with its engagement with L'Oreal, where it carries out 'bottle-to-bottle' recycling of plastic shampoo bottles.
"Banyan is the only Indian company yet to be recognized by 'The Circulars', the circular economy award program, at the World Economic Forum in Davos for its pioneering work in developing closed loop models in plastics recycling in emerging markets," says Vajipey.
Going beyond Vajipey and Madangopal were roommates in the US while doing their Masters in Engineering at the University of Delaware. The idea of Banyan Nation came about in 2013 when Vajipey was at Columbia Business School - he wanted to do something about the looming waste crisis plaguing Indian cities. Banyan was incubated at Columbia Business School, where Vajipey, under the guidance of US waste management pioneer Ron Gonen (a key advisor for the company), conceptualized the idea.
Banyan today is not merely recycling plastics. It has developed a data intelligence platform that is now being used by municipalities and city governments to sense, track, aggregate, and analyse data on waste flows in their cities to undertake more effective and cost-efficient waste management. The State of Telangana has signed MoUs with Banyan to adopt the platform across the state.
"Globally the market for 'Circular Economy' products and services is estimated to be over $4 trillion. In India alone this is a $1 billion market. Plastics form a significant chunk of this opportunity," says Vajipey.
The company was started with capital support from friends and family, but since then the company has raised roughly $1 million in additional capital.
"We have outgrown our current facility of 1200 TPA and are in the middle of setting up a much larger processing facility of up to 10,000 TPA in the next year," says Vajipey.
However, the startup's journey has not been without challenges. "Integrating the supply chain has been and will continue to be both a challenge and an opportunity for us. Being a technology driven company, we will continue to drive innovative technology solutions to root out inefficiencies in the supply chain and bring more informal last mile collectors into a more traceable value chain," says Vajipey.
Vajipey does not reveal the current revenue for the company, but states it earns money from the sale of recycled plastic granules and Government contracts for the smart waste IoT platform.
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