India is the second largest recycler of PET bottles in the world, cited a year-long study conducted by scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL, Pune / India; www.ncl-india.org) and PET Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE, New Delhi / India; www.paceindia.org.in).

The study reports that India recycles 90% of its PET waste annually. During 2015-16, 900,000 t of PET bottles were recycled in India – of which 65% was recycled at registered facilities, 15% in the unorganised sector and 10% was reused at home. While India has observed an increase in its PET recycling rate, the numbers are not that impressive for the rest of the world. The recycling rate for PET is 72.1% in Japan, 48.3% in Europe and 31% in the US.

Unlike Europe, where people themselves go and submit PET bottles for recycling, in India the task is done by ragpickers and waste collectors who collect plastic waste from roads, municipal dustbins and local dump yards. They then manually separate the collected waste to isolate plastic waste from non-plastic fractions and sell it to waste traders, who further send the collected bottles to a nearby recycling facility. There, these plastic bottles are shredded to make polyester fibre of various grades, which are further used to make PET sheets, pillow filling, apparel and much more.

Today, India is more committed to PET recycling, and supporting the cause are several companies, environmental organisations, as well as the Indian cricket team. The latter even wore apparel made from recycled PET bottles in the 2015 ICC World Cup to give a big boost to PET recycling.