Waste paper recycling to meet ITC plant's raw material needs - The Hindu Business Line
June 27, 2010
What started as a pilot project of the Paperboards and Speciality Papers Division of ITC Ltd, in the form of systematic waste collection and segregation of city garbage and thereafter use of the waste paper for paper production, has now assumed scale.
In about two years, the entire raw material required (waste paper) for paper manufacture at ITC's Coimbatore plant in Tamil Nadu will be met through this initiative.
The company now collects about 5,000 tonnes of waste paper from some southern cities barely within three years of initiation of a project to collect waste and segregate paper for recycle. This is projected to go up to 10,000 tonnes by 2011-12, sufficient to fuel the entire raw material requirement at the Coimbatore plant, according to Mr Jogarao Bhamidipati, Vice-President, Commercial, ITC Ltd, Paperboards and Speciality Papers Division.
"The pilot started in select towns in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and implemented in Bangalore and Kochi, now helps collect up to 5,000 tonnes of waste paper per month. Effectively, this helps produce almost equal amount of paper. For manufacture of one million tonnes of paper, about four million tonnes of pulp or one million tonne of waste paper is required," he said.
This move has attracted other paper companies, he said. They are likely to take up similar initiatives in the plant catchment area.
