While youngsters are madly after government and corporate jobs, a young post-graduate in Kerala has stepped up to make a difference in the society by starting a groundbreaking startup to combat plastic waste menace plaguing our planet.
Meet Jabir Karat, a 33-year-old post graduate in History from Delhi University who has founded the startup Greenworms in 2014 in Kozhikode to collect and recycle negative value plastic waste.
It was a project as part of a fellowship on environment and sustainability after his post-graduation that made ignited a passion within him to address the plastic waste menace. “Plastic waste management requires innovative solutions. Though several organisations are collecting plastic waste, they end up in land fills without being recycled. Our startup aims to collect negative value waste which no one collects from households. We only charge a nominal fee for collecting it and recycling it,” Jabir told “Open Digest“.
Jabir’s startup Greenworms has set up a sorting plant at Thamarassery in Kozhikode where the plastic waste collected from different places in the state are brought and sorted.
While traditional recycling focuses on high-value plastics like PET bottles and HDPE containers, Greenworms also concentrates on collecting and sorting negative value plastic waste which includes low-grade plastics, single-use items and non-recyclable plastics that often end up in landfills or worse, polluting oceans and natural habitats.
“We follow a three-step process in plastic waste management. First, our dedicated team of waste collectors scour neighbourhoods, beaches, and waste dumps to collect plastic waste. Next, the collected waste is sorted at our state-of-the-art facility, where innovative technologies and manual labor work in tandem to segregate various types of plastics effectively. Finally, the sorted plastic waste is sent to partner recycling plants, where it is transformed into raw materials for various industries,” he said.
His innovative startup not only addresses the glaring plastic pollution issue but also generates economic value out of waste that was previously deemed worthless. Jabir has won praise from different quarters for coming out with an innovative startup for waste management. “Our startup focuses on transforming how we perceive and manage plastic waste, mainly negative value plastic,” Jabir said.
Jabir’s journey from a history graduate to an eco-entrepreneur serves as a reminder that anyone can be an agent of positive change and that small steps can lead to a giant leap in the fight against plastic waste.
Be First to Comment