Plastic Alchemy

On World Ocean Day in June, a dolphin washed up on to Sri Ma beach. “It was a young dolphin that had not died a natural death, possibly related to pollution, or to swallowed plastic,” says Satya Agrawal, a teacher in NESS school, who was catalysed by this event to start collecting waste on the beach. “There is trash everywhere, but it hurts most on the beach because it causes a lot of harm to sea life.”

Zero Waste Beach is an initiative that collects trash from Auroville’s beaches. The collected garbage is segregated, and the plastic waste is alchemically transformed into new items. 

The team hopes this could be a freely replicable model for the up-cycling and re-cycling of trash in rural India.

The project started in June at the height of the lockdown, with different groups coming together to clean beach trash, including numerous guests stranded in Auroville since March. They felt Covid time was an opportunity to look afresh at existing social issues, especially garbage.

Satya tried to find a solution to sea plastic. “I talked to some of the waste-free Auroville groups, asking what we can do with it. Everybody said ‘You can’t do anything. It’s too degraded with too much salt and sun, it’s useless plastic’.” 

He then met Jorge of Minvayu, a part of CSR, who shared Satya’s passion to generate positive solutions to the waste problem. “Since then, we’ve been relentless in bringing plastic here with new ideas, new moulds and 3D printing.”

Using what is presumed to be India’s largest 3D printer, Minvayu’s outdoor farm lab in Terra Soul experiments with transforming material into new uses. Their vision is to find ways to up-cycle plastic waste using low-tech open source technology. Jorge notes: “We’re doing things in Auroville with few resources, a lot of volunteer work and global collaborations.” 

The twice weekly clean-ups on Quiet and Sri Ma beaches started with up to 80 volunteers, though recently it has reduced to about a dozen people. Livia and Beatriz, two Brazilian volunteers, were motivated to make a difference. Livia set up the Instagram site to publicise their work and believes in “Zero Waste Beach as a future. We are trying to create this reality”. “We want to create solutions for things we found” says Beatriz. “We see a huge amount of fishing materials, which are such a problem for sea life. We can recognise every type of garbage and send it to the right destination. However, for some multi-layered items like tetrapak or chip packets, there is no solution”.

On each beach visit, the group fills around ten sacks of trash. Both beaches have become noticeably cleaner, though rubbish still piles up every day. All the collected plastic goes to Terra Soul, paper and cardboard goes to Well Paper, bottles to Light-Fish, an Auroville unit that manufactures innovative lighting, and all other recyclable and un-recyclable goods to Eco-service. 

In Minvayu, the plastic is washed to remove sand and salt, then dried and separated into different types of plastic. For instance, the ubiquitous toothbrushes have nylon bristles with polypropylene handles, which means that pliers are needed to manually remove the bristles to reuse the polypropylene. The team initially made a gas oven from discarded bricks in which they melt plastic to form bowls and coasters, all uniquely marbled with swirling colours creating a new form. They are constantly experimenting and learning how to transform plastic into newer forms. Jorge has now designed a bigger oven and “we will be able to melt and process at least ten times more beach plastic every day with this new oven” says Satya enthusiastically.

“We need local solutions to local problems,” says Jorge. “In each country it is different. For instance, there is no electricity here, plus we don’t have money. We do have gas and could use biogas, so we are developing very simple systems.” 

The team plans to create a mini recycling unit, and is currently experimenting with the creation of products using a smaller 3D printer. 

An important social aspect to their work is Satya’s meetings with locals and the panchayat. Curious fishermen asked him what he was doing and when they found out he was a teacher, asked him to help their children. Jorge recalls that “Satya was doing something nobody has done: actually engaging with villagers on the beach and teaching fishermen’s kids.”

Beatriz points to one of the consequences of working in recycling. “I feel like once you start to clean rubbish, you can’t be in denial anymore. I pick things up now when I go out, even if I am not on the beach, and I have become more aware of what I consume. Now that I am working with plastic, I avoid buying it as much as I can.” Livia continues, “I studied pedagogy in Brazil, and here we are educating ourselves, we are learning all the time; about waste, about teaching people waste management, and trying to create something new for people and the environment.” 

Satya asserts that the project has given him hope for the future. “I was going crazy thinking about what to do with all this plastic. I talked to many people and was discouraged, but after starting this project, I have so much hope that we can find a solution.”