Bio-Composite Packaging Material Out of Crop Stubble Waste

To create sustainable and impactful utilisation of crop stubble waste, we developed biotechnology based process to create biodegradable packaging material that works as alternative to conventional thermocol or polystyrene.

We are a young team of action-oriented innovators trying to change the world with a collective vision of eliminating the immense problem of Air Pollution. We are using the power of Bio-Technology & Financial Modelling, to create a sustainable and scalable line of products.

To tackle the problem of air pollution due to crop stubble burning, We found a solution that is even faster than fire: bailing machines. We partner with aggregators, who own bailer machines, who go on fields, and collect the waste from farms by incentivizing farmers (providing them with extra income & saving them from penalties due to stubble burning) and stock the material to provide us year round.

On the other end to create a sustainable and impactful utilisation of this crop stubble waste, we developed a biotechnology based process to create biodegradable packaging material that works as an alternative to conventional “thermocol” or polystyrene. This R&D took us almost 1.5 years to develop. The material is sturdy, water proof and cost competitive to the conventional thermocol. Most important, completely degradable in just 60 days.

The problem is 2 fold:

1. The problem of crop stubble burning: Every year in India alone, about 84 million tonnes of crop stubble waste is burnt. Because this is the fastest and cheapest method to clear the fields before sowing of next crop. But this creates an immense amount of pollution, so much so that, every year during the harvest season of rice, it turns our capital city and nearby places into a situation like “Gas Chamber”. With air quality levels (AQI) reaching 999+ i.e. beyond the measurable capacity of the AQI chart. Healthy AQI levels are under 60! 

As per research each tonne of crop stubble burnt releases, 54 kg of poisonous Carbon Monoxide (CO) and 1.63 kg of Nitrogen oxides(NOx), 9.5kg of GHG methane(CH4), and 19kg of choking Particulate Matter! All in addition to 1444 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2). Such practice puts immense stress on our environment and breathable air.

2. The problem of unsustainable waste packaging material: With the advent and popularity of online shopping, our society produce enormous amounts of unsustainable waste in form of packaging. Every product that we buy comes with significant amount of packaging material. Worst of them being polystyrene or thermocol. 

Polystyrene manufacturing is the 5th largest industrial producer of hazardous waste. India alone consumes over 500,000 tonnes of polystyrene annually.

Our Solutions serves:

1. Farmers: Although the first ones to be impacted by the wrath of the pollution, the farmers are bound to burn the crop stubble waste because of the lack of any cost-effective alternative technology/methodology.

Solution - Saves from pollution, increases their income even on the waste they produce, clears of their land within a few hours so that they can sow their next crop, saves them from penalties, uplifts womens (skilled & unskilled) of the Tier - 2 & Tier - 3 locations by providing employment since they have stable hands required for our work.

2. Corporates, MSME (B2B Sector): Saving them from extra work & cost of EPR Policies (Extended Producer Responsibility), which puts a financial onus on the producers to either set up reverse logistics or a safe handling network of the plastic they create in the packaging of their products. Setting up reverse logistics is a costly affair and thus incentivises our customers to rather shift to biodegradable alternatives such as ours.

Target Problem Research: Our team stayed in villages / farms for weeks at stretch, understood available solutions, and why they don't work. The scalability issues in the solutions that can potentially work and reached a conclusion, that the only way we can win over this massive problem at scale is if we can collect the stubble waste utilizing the Baler Machines: Machines that very rapidly cover fields and collect the stubble waste into compressed bales that can later be transported. The use of such machines is very common in all other western and European countries. The only problem: To create demand for such stubble bales. Currently these bales are usually burnt in furnaces as alternative to wood. To reach our vision of Zero combustions we explored all possible alternatives to this stubble waste, from creating vermi-compost to biogas to paper pulp, but none made economic sense. So we created our own process using biotechnology to convert it into packaging material.

Customer Research: We have made a few samples (prototypes) for the potential client segments in the market, and we have presented the samples to them. In return they have provided us in writing that as soon as the production starts they would be the first adopters to this solution, since they loved the product as well as the story behind it. They even tested this product by packaging their products into it and shipping to their end-users. Even the end-users loved our products.

Growth / Early Product Stage

1. Prototypes ready, verified from the Market (Target Customer Segment)

2. Technology (Inhouse) matured to manufacture the products

3. Business Model Ready & in place. Verified in conversations with various Business Mentors.

4. Market Ready for disruption due to a boost from the Government in forms of various laws.

5. Market Value Research: Indian Packaging industry alone is of 72.6 Billion USD wherein Bio-degradable packaging out of it is a massive 5 Billion USD.

We have developed a process to convert the Crop Stubble Waste (parali) into useful biodegradable packaging material utilizing the power of Biotechnology. We have created a specific mix of ingredients (all waste material) such that when the cultural strain is inoculated upon the mix, it starts to eat the waste mix as food and degrade lignin in the process. While the growth happens, the root structure of fungi completely covers the substrate material. This material is then transferred to specific shaped moulds. When the roots grows inside the mould, it takes the shape of the mould and holds the substrate material very tightly together because of dense fibrous material growth. This material is finally dried in Oven to neutralize the strain. What is left is a bio-composite with properties better to that of thermocol (polystyrene).

Currently Serves:

20,000 Farmers - Increased each farmers income by 61%

100 Corporates & MSMEs (Business) - Large (Saved 5% of their Expenses) & Small (Saved 7.8% of their Expenses)

Plans to Serve:

6.58 Million Farmers - Increasing each farmers income by 72%

785 Thousand Corporates & MSMEs (Businesses) - Large (Saving 6.1% of their Expenses) & Small (10.4% of their Expenses)

Social impact: Farmers themself don't want to burn the stubble as their families are the first ones to bear the threatening smog but they are helpless! Aggregators are more than happy to buy equipment to clean fields, given the collection is bought off.

1. With our solution, we ensure fresh and cleaner air, with contribution to air pollution of the 5th largest contributor, namely crop stubble waste, eliminated.

2. Women empowerment and employment generation for underprivileged in various stages of Supply chain

3. Air pollution disproportionately hits poor community and they incur unfulfillable expenses in medication due to health adversities caused. With our solution, the economic burden of these groups of society is also greatly reduced.

Economic Impact: 

Additional revenue from selling crop stubble waste would provide the Farmers with another avenue to market their crop, and will eventually result in better realizations for the Farmers

More jobs created in the manufacturing & biotechnology space as the process is majorly manual rather than machine-driven.

Environmental impact:

With awareness about the use of biodegradable packaging materials increasing, our product is 100 % biodegradable in just 60 days, is excellent choice to replace plastics and can also restore nutrients to soil on decomposition.

As per research, each tonne of crop stubble burnt releases, 54 kg of poisonous Carbon Monoxide (CO) and 1.63 kg of Nitrogen oxides(NOx), 9.5kg of GHG methane (CH4) and 19kg of choking Particulate Matter! All in addition to 1444 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Market Indicators:

1. Onboarding new clients

2. Onboarding Various SKUs from each clients to increase order value

3. Validate Story & Products on recurring frequencies from the market

4. Reducing the costs further by continuously improvising our technology so that the clients are benefited & our profits also increases

5. Impacting more farmers, Corporates & MSMEs (Clients) & Employment Sectors

6. Impacting the country's as well as the global economies in a synchronized manner

Most Important - Reducing Air Pollution in Million of Tonnes, the more the merrier

Alignment & fulfillment of all the conditions of the following SDGs will also be indicators for us:

1. SDG 3 - Good Health & Well Being

2. SDG 7 - Affordable & Clean Energy

3. SDG 8 - Decent Work & Economic Growth

4. SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

5. SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities & Communities

6. SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption & Production

7. SDG 13 - Climate Action

8. SDG 14 - Life Below Water

9. SDG 15 - Life on Land

1. Our nature of technology is capex intensive, it involves significant investment in infrastructure before the production work can be started. All the machinery required to do the production at scale is very costly since it has to be sterile in every step as we are handling biotechnological cultures.

These factors imply that we need a high Capex fund and high working capital. 

This can be solved by appropriate financial engineering: i.e. opting ways to develop business without blocking own capital. As per today’s clarity and understanding, we wish to go on a franchise model, sharing profits with contract manufacturers, while keeping the control over culture production, SOPs and sales and marketing.

As far as quality check is concerned, clients seek drop tests. We have conducted drop tests for various samples and all of them cleared the drop tests successfully.

2. Proper implementation of SOPs after expanding is necessary which we are trying to solve from today, by building robust  training modules for each employee (Skilled & unskilled), with physical interaction, proper work demonstration, providing SOP documents & videos for references.

We have a diverse but a vision oriented team. Since we have a climate change vision (Common for the entire team) through reduction in Air Pollution & our current range of product is based on Bio-Technology & Manufacturing we have a diverse team in sense of Education like some are

1. Bio-Technologist, Micro-Biologist: Core Technology Improvising

2. Mechanical, Electrical & Electronics Engineers: Proper Machine designs and working through out with regular inspections to reduce the infrastructure cost to minimum

3. Psychologist: To understand Customers & Stakeholders psychologies

4. MBAs, Finance Specialists - Leading the team in proper business aspects with Financial Stability

RCB (Regional Center for Bio-Technology) - One of the India's Biggest Bio-Technology Campus - Research Purpose - Technology Improvement - Taken a laboratory in support from them for our Team to develop complete technology inhouse

IARI (Indian Agricultural Research Institute) - To perform researches on various agricultural aspects on regular frequencies

Planning to Partner with even more Business Mentors, Technology Mentors, Investment Mentos & Guides to plan most of our moves strategically. We a few already on board right now.

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The impact we are targeting for the Year 2022 is of 23 Million Tonnes of Crop Stubble. All the help, resources (in monetary form or in kind), and mentorship in this process is a boost to us which will enable us to be more fruitful in all the impacts we have planned. Specifically help women in farms with an additional income for themselves & their families along with a lot of employment & health benefits. This kind of a Social, Economic & Environmental Impact is never heard of before which we are planning to undertake.