Circulate Capital is an investment management firm dedicated to financing innovation, companies, and infrastructure that prevent the flow of plastic waste into the world’s ocean while advancing the circular economy.
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 in this initiative by Companies 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.
In India, Ocean Fund to make a real, scalable difference in plastics waste management aligned with the governments Swachh Bharat Mission.
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.
Waste a Global crisis
According to CCOF, there are an estimated 150 million tons of plastic in the ocean today and that number grows by approximately 8 million tons a year — the equivalent to a garbage truck unloading every minute.
Research has found that most of that plastic enters the ocean from just five countries in South and Southeast Asia and that we could reduce the flow by as much as 50% by investing in waste and recycling management and even more if we invest in alternative materials and technologies.
Investors have a key role to play and it is time to act now. To unlock the capital needed from institutional investors to build circular supply chains and sustainable waste and recycling systems in South and Southeast Asia, catalytic capital needs to prove that investing in this sector is scalable and can generate competitive returns.
Circulate Capital established the world’s first investment fund dedicated to preventing ocean plastic: Circulate Capital Ocean Fund (CCOF). CCOF is a new, blended financing mechanism, bringing together the public and private sectors to invest for maximum impact. It was created in partnership with leading corporations, PepsiCo, the first investor, Coca-Cola, Danone, Chanel, Unilever, Dow, Procter & Gamble, Chevron Phillips Chemical and backed by USAID.
For example, recently, 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. 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.
(India CSR)
