Plastic Recycling is Very Much an At-scale Business, Say Harsh Mariwala and Masood Mallick

Harsh Mariwala: One of the reasons for [the brand] Parachute’s success in the market was how we shifted the market from tin to plastics. However, I am always asked about the harm that plastic is causing to the environment. That question kept bugging me.

Somewhere down the line, Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF) came up with a proposal for a research project on innovators in plastic recycling. We identified 15 innovators and released a report two to three years back. We then decided to help these companies scale up and accelerate their growth.

However, that was not creating the big impact that we wanted. One needed a holistic viewpoint to tackle the problem that plastic causes to the environment.

Our team at MIF identified Re Sustainability as an expert in the recycling space. We entered into an agreement and are now putting in place a recycling plant at Hyderabad. Once the prototype is successful commercially, the plan is to scale up this model in other parts of the country. For that we hope to rope in other corporates.

We have also had discussions with Niti Aayog on issues around plastic recycling. The ultimate vision is to create a movement around plastic recycling, but first we must prove ourselves.

There is pressure on fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies to use good-quality clean plastics [in their packaging material]. If successful, we could provide them with clean plastics.

Mariwala: Yes, but first we must prove our credentials and showcase this. I am sure given our connections in the corporate and the FMCG sector there will be traction.

Masood Mallick: We are right now at the construction stage of the Hyderabad facility. We are likely to commission the plant early 2026 and stabilise the operations by middle of next year.

The solution to plastic recycling lies in the problem itself. You cannot solve this in isolation, but you need an ecosystem which connects the point of origin of this material—the plastic—back to the point of origin in full circularity.

The upstream and downstream, where the material comes from, how it gets consumed, how the waste is generated, how it is recycled and put back into the economy as feedstock for new products—it must be one ecosystem. If it is fragmented, we lose value. This is the reason why most of plastic recycling in India— other than to some extent PET [polyethylene terephthalate]—has remained a cottage industry on a smaller scale.

We need to prove that this can be done as an organised solution at scale so that plastic recycling is mainstream. The first learning is that you need to do this in collaboration with upstream and downstream.

Another important lesson we learnt is that this cannot be just a post-collection exercise. Through this pilot we also understood how to launch behavioural change campaigns in society to ensure waste segregation at home. Lastly, when we look at the feedstock, we are getting better understanding of the brand representation from the catchment area. That is a powerful source of information.

As we take this project to other cities like Mumbai, Pune and Chennai in Phase II in financial year 2028, we would need many other brands to be part of this. By financial year 2030, we want to take this nation-wide and be an absolutely integrated circular-polymer business in the country.

Mariwala: This is a high-investment initiative and could run into thousands of crores. We would like to rope in other FMCG companies and show them that this is worth doing and that there is payback from a financial point of view.

We have to involve other corporates to make this a movement. Given the magnitude of the problem, it will need involvement of more corporates and the support of the government.

Mallick: This venture is not just demonstration—but about taking the learnings and scaling them nationwide. This is very much an at-scale business.