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 associated with industrial waste management as part of our family business. In the 1990s, I saw a lot of non-recyclable waste either being dumped or incinerated and in 1999 we started a small manufacturing plant for recycling of multi-layer packaging waste which comes from the liquid packaging industry, popularly known as tetra pack.” It is here that waste is being converted into various composite boards and composite board-based products which could replace wood and wood-based panels and in many cases plastic and plastic-based panels too.
Composite wood is today a sustainable solution as it utilizes non-recyclable waste as raw material, does not create any further waste, or use water in the production process.
Jignesh Shah
There was a lot of resistance from the market initially as recycled products at the time did not have much acceptability. The first thought in the customer’s mind was since the product was made from scrap, it had to be inferior. The efforts put in to create products for unique applications like the autorickshaw seat base made the difference. Today, worldwide, almost 85% of the autorickshaws plying have a seat base and back rest made from Deluxe recycled composite board under the brand name Ecolink.
Composite wood is much better because, unlike wood, it does not absorb water and is not susceptible to attacks by termites, borers, fungus and bacteria. “Since the last 18 years, we are the single source supplier to the automobile sector for the seat base and back rest applications for both passenger and driver seats. We have also developed pallets for storage of food grains in government warehouses like FCI (Food Corporation of India) and Central Warehousing Corporation, where bulk quantities of grains, which traditionally were stored in wooden pallets, are now using durable composite pallets that are long lasting with a lifespan of seven to 10 years.”
With set goals and strategies to provide what the customer can gain from, apart from supplying the product, there are training sessions to continuously educate the clients on how to use them and enhance their usage. From the price perspective, composite wood is definitely expensive than commercial plywood, but it lasts at least two to three times longer. “We are however more competitive than marine plywood.”
Since the product is more plastic than wood, specialised glues are required to stick objects to its surface. For structural use, additional support is required as composite wood tends to bend more than natural wood. The raw materials are multi-layer plastic-based packaging waste, including tetra packs and any kind of food packaging having more than one layer of plastic, be it aluminium or paper or both.
Deluxe is a self-sustaining project that is operating with no assistance from the government. Over the last two years, the manufacturing facility has expanded capacity from 10,000 to 27,000 metric tonnes per annum. The best part is that at the end of the process there is no solid waste generation. “We do not use any water and there is no gaseous emission ensuring zero waste generated throughout the process.”
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