Page 56 - CIJ July 2024 Digital Edition

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Zero-Waste Composite
Wood Manufacturing

It needed courage to first design a product from waste way back in the 1990s. It needed
all the more courage to create a market for the product 23 years later and boast the
product’s presence in 85% of the target vehicles globally. Jignesh Shah, MD, Deluxe
Recycling Pvt. Ltd has stamped his company’s presence as the key supplier of composite
boards-based products made from non-recyclable waste rescued from landfills and
incinerators. He shares his story with Clean India Journal… from being a new entrant to
a professional in the industrial waste management business.

We were always products at the time did not have sector for the seat base and back
associated with industrial much acceptability. The first rest applications for both passenger
waste management as part thought in the customer’s mind and driver seats. We have also
of our family business. In was since the product was made developed pallets for storage
“the 1990s, I saw a lot of from scrap, it had to be inferior. of food grains in government
non-recyclable waste either being The efforts put in to create products warehouses like FCI (Food
dumped or incinerated and in 1999 for unique applications like the Corporation of India) and Central
we started a small manufacturing autorickshaw seat base made the Warehousing Corporation, where
plant for recycling of multi-layer difference. Today, worldwide, bulk quantities of grains, which
packaging waste which comes almost 85% of the autorickshaws traditionally were stored in wooden
from the liquid packaging industry, plying have a seat base and back pallets, are now using durable
popularly known as tetra pack.” rest made from Deluxe recycled composite pallets that are long
It is here that waste is being composite board under the brand lasting with a lifespan of seven to
converted into various composite name Ecolink. 10 years.”
boards and composite board-based Composite wood is much better With set goals and strategies to
products which could replace because, unlike wood, it does not provide what the customer can
wood and wood-based panels and absorb water and is not susceptible gain from, apart from supplying
in many cases plastic and plastic- to attacks by termites, borers, the product, there are training
based panels too. fungus and bacteria. “Since the sessions to continuously educate
There was a lot of resistance from last 18 years, we are the single the clients on how to use them
the market initially as recycled source supplier to the automobile and enhance their usage. From

JULY 2024•Clean India Journal
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