Pune generates an estimated 30,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day out of the use of milk and milk products of all the brands. In an effort to reduce this landfill and plastic waste, A2 dairy start-up Truly Desi has tied up with ProEarth, a social enterprise to enable its customers to send back their used but cleaned milk pouches for recycling. Truly Desi has been collecting milk pouches for recycling for a few months and has so far recycled 30% plastic milk pouches. Through this initiative, Truly Desi aims to recycle 80-90% of its milk packaging in the near future.
Plastic is single-handedly the biggest destructor of the planet and plastic milk bags are constant contributors to it. Talking about this, Mohit Rathod, Co-founder of Truly Desi, said, “ Around 5 Crores milk pouches turn into waste daily in India which sit in landfills for up to 400 years. Since we are already working towards the betterment of society we thought why not take a step ahead? To overcome the waste generated by us, we are trying to put in an organized system of collection and recycling of our Milk pouches. We plan to work on a bigger scale ahead where a major chunk of Waste material will be recycled and returned to the economy.”
Under this initiative, customers are requested to wash, dry, and save whole milk packets instead of throwing them into dustbins. At the end of the month, the delivery agents collect these packets and forward them to ProEarth to recycle them and tackle waste. Truly Desi also requests its customers against snipping the corners off packets of milk to pour the milk out. Instead of that, they have suggested that a slight slit is enough to empty it. And, by not cutting all the way through, one can save a large number of plastic bits from littering the land.
Hamsa Iyer, General Manager, ProEarth said, “Customers are now becoming more conscious and we need people to see action on the ground. ProEarth is here to practice that action as we believe in creating transparent value chains for recyclable waste. When we ask anyone to change their lifestyle and habits, we need to assert and implement the supplementing solutions and this is what we aim to do by joining hands with Truly Desi.” ProEarth is a Pune-based green enterprise that aggregates different materials such as glass, plastic, e-waste, cardboard, etc. and sends them to their network of recyclers. Through their composting and recycling projects, they are able to enable green jobs on the ground.
It is the collective responsibility of the dairy industry to reduce the waste caused by empty milk packs. Discarded milk packs have an adverse effect on our environment but a lot of good comes out of recycling plastic packs. The plastic recycling industry provides livelihood to thousands of people who make and sell recycled products.
