Green Earth Pakistan
takes on gargantuan recycling project It has taken decades to spread recycling awareness among businesses. There is still a long way to go
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f all of the packaging that Tetra Pak produces globally, nearly 27% of it is recycled worldwide. Yet in Pakistan, Tetra Pak has a higher rate of recycling than the global rate, with nearly 41% of Tetra Pak products in Pakistan successfully recycled. What makes this statistic even more impressive is that this does not only include the materials that Tetra Pak collects and recycles from its own factories but also those products that either are in the homes of end users that buy Tetra Pak packaged products like milk and juice from their clients like Nestle, Shakarganj or FrieslandCampina. The aluminum in the packages is separated, and nearly 75% of the packaging is made from tree/sugarcane/cellulose materials that can be extracted and reused to make paper products. The rest of the plastic material from the packaging is compressed into planks that then go into plastic furniture and the like. How has Tetra Pak managed to pull this off? With the help of Green Earth Recycling plant, a massive recycling plant in the heart of Lahore with the capacity to recycle nearly 100 tonnes of material in a day. Founded and headed by Zaffar Bhatti, who is interestingly the son of the late Major Aziz Bhatti, Green Earth Recycling has been
RECYCLING
operating for decades. In this entire time, they have witnessed a complete indifference towards the concept of recycling transform into a care to do away with plastics from both large and small companies, as well as the general public.
Green beginnings
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heir business story has been one of perseverance and forward thinking, and because of that they now have a first mover advantage on a business that is likely to have a continued rise in demand over the next few years. A major part of this story have been companies like Tetra Pak. Green Earth Recycling was started in the 1980s by Zaffar Bhatti. At the time that East and West Germany were reunifying, there was a great push from the Western side to modernise the country’s industry. There were already recycling plants in the West by then, and Bhatti was able to set up his recycling plant using machinery and technology that the Germans were getting rid of because they wanted a fresh start on this front. By collecting plastic waste and by signing with different organizations to take their plastic waste off their hands, Green Earth began to repurpose this plastic waste as green furniture. If you are not familiar with
what this is, the very specific green benches and tables you often see in parks are made out of this material. “The first thing we targeted were plastic bags. These were everywhere in the country, and with the technology that we have it was easy to compress them and turn them into planks that we could then use for our purposes,” says Zaffar Bhatti. “Plastics have not been around long enough for us to know what their life is and how long it takes for them to biodegrade. Some scientists used to say it takes a hundred years, but now we know that it could be as long as four or five hundred years as well.” “This nature of plastic is what has always been its greatest flaw and its greatest problem. Now, we are taking that flaw and turning it into its biggest advantage. Because plastic does not biodegrade or get damaged, the furniture we make lasts, holds its shape, and is a win-win situation.” Green Earth Recycling’s business model is based on converting plastic waste into useful “recycled plastic furniture” giving the plastic a second life, through a successful combination of material and technology. The company’s sustainably made furniture is resistant to natural damage and helps save trees while reducing solid plastic waste. The concept is to create innovative sustainable materials that reduce the negative
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