Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd planned to set a target to recycle over 7,000 million tonnes (MT) of post-consumer used plastic waste in the current fiscal and would convert into a “plastic waste neutral” company by the financial year 2023-24.
Mother Dairy’s pledge to become a plastic waste neutral company involves that the company will collect, recycle, and co-process the same amount of plastic waste that is used in its product packaging in a year.
Mother Dairy began its plastic waste collection and recycling/co-processing initiative in Maharashtra in FY2018-19 under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programme and scaled up the initiative on a pan-India level for Multi-Layered Plastic Waste (MLP) in FY2019-20, in line with the Plastic Waste Management (PWM) Rules 2018 as amended.
The dairy giant has been thoroughly working with its suppliers and leading waste management agencies (WMA) for the execution of the National EPR framework.
Mother Dairy, through its associated partners, has collected and co-processed/recycled around 8,164 MT of post-consumer used plastic waste (5,318 MT of single-layered plastic waste and 2,846 MT of multi-layered plastic waste) from June 2018 till March 2022.
Manish Bandlish, Managing Director, Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd, said that as a responsible organisation, they pledge for a safer and cleaner environment for a better tomorrow. Testament to the fact is our Token Milk (branded loose milk) offering since 1984, which has been helping us to save approximately 7 lakh kg of plastic coming into the environment every year.
In line with our commitment, we have now set our sights on being a plastic waste neutral organisation by FY2023-24, while contributing towards making our planet safe for the generations to come, “he said.
The company is also working on a way to reduce the consumption of plastic by way of proposing alternatives to plastic straws used for the consumption of dairy beverages, which will soon be available with paper-based straws across its markets of operations.