Nepal Bioplastics - Transition to bioplastics through retrofitting
A blog by Samip Sigdel and Prabhas Ghimire, Frontier Tech implementing Partners
Pilot: Bioplastic future: using bioplastics to transform domestic plastic production
A massive 637 tons of waste plastic is produced every day in Nepal. Circularity, sustainable consumption and production and extended producer responsibility have remained primarily as goals that are either non-existent or over-ambitious for the nation. A very small percentage of the produced plastic waste is recycled while the most part ends up in landfill. Whatever fraction is recycled mostly happens through the traditional informal networks, ending up as a raw material for black mixed-plastic pipes (making it difficult to recycle further) or make their way across-border to India. While recently there have been some efforts from the government, development agencies and the private sector to improve recycling rates in the country, limited segregation at source and behavioral challenges among the general public make recycling challenging and expensive.
On the other hand, the choices of those that produce and consume plastic carrier bags is limited. In the past, the government had tried to enforce bans on plastic bags but due to pressure from the producers and the demands from the consumers, the bans had proven to be ineffective. According to an article published in Nepali Times, the government backtracked from the initial decision to ban all types of plastic bags in Nepal due to pressure from the producers. The producers stated that the government banned the plastic bags without proper research and providing other “options” to the manufacturers.
At Zero Circular, we aim to bring that “option” into the plastic ecosystem of Nepal, both as a choice of consumer goods to the public and the option to transition to bioplastic production companies to the traditional plastic producers. We aim to work in both these strata as enablers and facilitator, making biodegradable plastics available to the public at the most reasonable price and providing technical expertise for the plastic industries to transition to bioplastic manufacturing.
Our company’s journey started during the COVID lockdowns when we initially discussed a common interest to bring meaningful change to the plastic ecosystem. We studied the stakeholders, service providers, governance and the end users and identified that the most value we could create was by working upstream in the plastic domain and reducing the use of plastic as far as possible. As functional as any product can be imagined, plastic already has tight grip on the material industry and the existing robust supply chains and economies of scale give unfair advantage to plastic over any imagined substitute. Our best case for a substitute was something that at the least mimics the functionality of the plastic if not its prices: A plastic that degrades- Biodegradable plastics.
During our journey we wanted to test the idea that the way to engage current plastics manufacturers in bioplastics without forcing them to pay thousands of dollars in new machine costs is retrofitting their existing machines. Zero’s technology development for retrofitting of existing machineries for bioplastic production has been a journey on its own. Until now, we have improved the heating systems, the pre-processing segments and the die and air cooling component of the machine. The traditional machine works on broader temperature range-plastics, meaning the polymer used previously has a broader temperature range for melting before burning. This allows the machine to work with lower tolerances. On the other hand, the biopolymers are more sensitive to temperatures and require more controlled and precise heating and cooling mechanisms. This has been the core of our efforts to the retrofitting process. We have been trying to improve the heating and cooling performance of the machine in its input, throughput and output sections. The input or the raw material pre-processing was optimized by locally fabricating dry heating machine which is used to dry the polymer before being fed to the machine. This allows consistent heating of all polymers and remove any additional moisture content.
The main barrel section of the machine is where the melting occurs. This was reinforced with better heating and cooling mechanisms that entailed replacing and adding heat bands and introducing a cooling blower.
i. Local fabrication and ii. Installation of cooling blower on site
These reinforcements improved the consistency of extruded plastic bubble and thickness in the produced bioplastic.
Future improvements, especially in the output sections aim to improve the shape of the extruded plastic bubble and the strength and quality of the produced bioplastic. For the past two years we have dived deep into the research in biodegradable plastics, ranging from the sciences behind the biopolymers, process of producing the bioplastics, blow extrusion technology, machinery components, the composability vs biodegradability factors of bio-polymers, the political climate of the country, the supply chain of machinery parts and bio-polymers and most importantly the market.
Fig: Image of the machine with Hopper (feed), Extrusion Barrel and Die and Air Ring
The introduction of competitors has made us more conscious of our business, made us dive deeper into our research and provided a validation that this market is still growing. Now, we see ourselves as having even more responsibility of paving the unventured way further ahead for not just us, but many that are following our footsteps. Through this pilot we learned that retrofitting the existing plastics manufacturing machines is both technically feasible and provides an opportunity for small manufacturers to engage with clean and green plastics, but it is only one part of a broader effort to establish a new technology for the benefit of Nepal and the environment. There is still much to be done to establish a market for credible, certified and quality bioplastic as there are still thousands of plastic bags to be replaced everyday.
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