By Rusen Kumar

Mondelēz International to advance a circular economy for plastic waste with a an investment in the Circulate Capital Ocean Fund in India.

Mondelēz International announced commitment to advance a circular economy for plastic waste with a significant investment in the Circulate Capital Ocean Fund (CCOF), focused on advancing scalable business solutions for the collection of plastic waste, notably multi layered packaging film in India. This commitment is another significant step towards addressing the issue of multi layered packaging waste and recycling efforts in India.

Circulate Capital Ocean Fund is the world’s first investment fund dedicated to addressing India and Southeast Asia’s plastic crisis. The fund provides financing to waste management, recycling, and circular economy start-ups and small- and medium-sized enterprises across India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. CCOF helps identify recycling collection solutions and attracts the funding to both scale and replicate those solutions by connecting them to the world’s leading companies. The investment by Mondelēz International will focus on supporting the development of infrastructure to physically collect, sort and recycle packaging especially flexible plastic packaging supporting a circular pack economy. The Ocean Fund invests in companies that work directly on addressing local infrastructure bottlenecks for plastics including flexibles.

Commenting on the investment, Deepak Iyer, President – India, Mondelēz International, said “At Mondelēz International, as part of our commitment to reducing our environmental impact, we’re addressing the biggest sustainability challenges relevant to our business, including plastics pollution and climate change. Our focus is to support development of a circular pack economy and we want to realize this ambition by using less packaging, by providing the best possible packaging that is designed to be recycled and support the development of infrastructure to physically collect, sort and recycle packaging especially flexible plastic packaging. We are proud to be part of the Ocean Fund to make a real, scalable difference in plastics waste management aligned with the governments Swachh Bharat Mission.”

Recently, Mondelēz India announced an investment in Hasiru Dala, an NGO that will help recycle Multi-Layered Plastic (MLP) waste to sustainable furniture boards that can be used to build tables, benches, and other construction materials., to convert ~600 tonnes of MLP waste per annum into ‘WoW Boards’.

The company continues to make significant strides with over 97% of its packaging Designed for Recyclability (DFR) in India and has achieved 100% Extended Producer Responsibility targets in India for the last three years.

Circulate Capital Ocean Fund (CCOF) has invested in six key players of the Indian waste management and recycling value chain which are Lucro Plastecycle Private Limited, Nepra Waste Management Pvt Ltd, Srichakra Polyplast (India) Pvt Ltd, Rapidue Technologies (Recykal), Ricron Panels and Dalmia Polypro Industries.