Carthik Sharma

This is so deserving of WorldChanging.com attention.

Alka Zadgaonkar wrings plastic waste for profit.

A Ph.D. in organic chemistry in Nagpur, India has put into practice a plant that converts all sorts of waste plastic into fuel oil, petroleum gas and solid petroleum coke. It can work with all kinds of plastic waste, and doesn’t need the waste to be cleaned first. A fractional residue containing metals is the only possibly harmful by-product.

Alka and her husband Umesh, are buying in 5 tonnes of plastic waste everyday in Nagpur at prices attractive to rag pickers. They are wringing fuel oil out of that unsightly pile and selling it to industries in the Butibori Industrial Estate, on Wardha Road out of Nagpur. Production from their plant, Unique Plastic Waste Management & Research Co Pvt Ltd is sold out for the next year.

Reading the article gives some insight into the method used, as well as the difficulties they had to face in starting this up — their offer to let the government make use of the technology got stalled, and they finally struck it out on their own with a bank loan.

Their son, Akshay, is a geek, and the “youngest” MSDN developer in the world, at 12!
That encouragement led Akshay to become at 12, the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Software Developer [MCSD]. The Zadgaonkar family was sent tickets to Seattle for a private meeting with Bill Gates. [Akshay, yet to finish college is interning with Microsoft at Hyderabad.]

My first thoughts on reading about this on some other site was that this too will be a hoax — snake oil — so to speak, but I think this one passes the ultimate test of legitimacy - a google search (just kidding).

Man, if these guys were in the United States, she would have been a millionaire, and VCs would be lining up on their porch. Not in India, though:

But at the Zadgaonkar household, values have hardly changed. Success sits lightly on this family of knowledge seekers: Alka refuses to give up her calling as a teacher.

Somebody take up on this, and start disposing of plastics in a useful way, please.
(If you eat at Subway, you can help, by saying you don’t need the plastic bag for the sandwich )

Filed by Carthik at 1:18 pm under India, Science

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