Burn it, dissolve it, eat it: is the solution to India's waste problem in the bag?

In Ashwath Hegde’s 10th-floor office in the south-Indian city of Bengaluru, plastic has become a multi-sensory experience.

“Just see what happens,” Hegde says, tearing a piece from a small plastic bag and setting it on fire. “There are no fumes. Plastic normally has a horrible smell when it burns.”

Hegde summons one of his employees to bring in a glass of boiling water, and drops a sheet of the biodegradable non-toxic plastic in, stirring vigorously with a spoon as the bag shrivels and dissolves, leaving the water cloudy white. “100% soluble,” he says.

Then he places a square of plastic on his tongue and, after slowly chewing, swallows it. “It’s completely edible! We’re not recommending that people eat these plastic bags but, if they do, nothing will happen to them. It’s totally safe.”

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Hegde, 24, developed the bag, made entirely from tapioca and vegetable starches, as part of his mission to reduce India’s 14.8m tonnes of annual plastic consumption. That figure, among the highest in the world, is set to rise to a staggering 20m tonnes by 2020 as plastic usage increases with urbanisation.

Hegde is one of several entrepreneurs who have started formulating innovative solutions to the plastic waste problem. One company has started manufacturing cracker-like edible cutlery, while a handful of cities are building polymer roads.

Plastic waste makes up a large chunk of Bengaluru’s 3,500 tonnes of daily waste. Walking the streets, its descent from “garden city” to “garbage city” is evident. Discarded cups, chocolate wrappers and bags litter ponds, parks and roadsides, clogging the already inadequate drainage system and causing artificial floods and traffic jams during the monsoon rains.

Plus, says Swati Singh Sambyal, programme manager at the Centre for Science and Environment, roaming animals often consume plastic bags. “As per an estimate, on an average, 30kg of plastic has been found in the guts of cows in the country. People discard waste in plastic bags, and the animals searching for food consume the plastic, along with the leftover food materials. The plastic gets accumulated in their rumens and becomes hard. These animals look healthy, but that is just an illusion – they often die a slow and painful death due to starvation.”

Municipal efforts to curb the city’s overflowing garbage, under the campaign to clean up India spearheaded by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, have had limited success. Fines for unseparated rubbish have been introduced, rubbish trucks have been installed with GPS trackers to ensure they don’t cut routes, and a ban on plastic bags has been attempted. However, on the city’s fringes, landfills continue to be overburdened, and residents report having to close their doors because of the stench from piles of rubbish.

The situation is as bad or worse in many other Indian cities, says Sambyal: “Every day, 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated in the country. Only 9,000 tonnes get collected.”

For Hegde, who grew up in a farming family in the coastal city of Mangalore, the rubbish mountains of modern, industrialised India are shocking. “In India, we treat the sun, earth and water as gods. I’m a Hindu, and this is part of our culture and our heritage. We must preserve it for future generations.”

In 2012, Hegde invested his own money to develop his new type of plastic. Though he is secretive about the manufacturing process, he has certificates from the Pollution Control Board and the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology to prove his products are biodegradable and can be digested if eaten by animals.

Last year, his company, Envigreen, officially launched a line of plastic products including bags, medical aprons and packaging materials. He has received orders from brands such as L’Oréal, Metro Cash & Carry and Reliance. Already, Hegde says, he’s having to shift operations to a factory outside the city to meet growing demand. He hopes to conquer much more than the city of Bengaluru with his edible plastic. “Its my dream to create a global brand,” he says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Piles of rubbish accumulate by a lake in Bangalore where a population surge since the 1990s has vastly increased the problem of waste. Photograph: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

As India’s megacities grapple with waste, a number of municipalities – most recently the capital, Delhi – have started banning plastic bags, demanding vendors use jute or cloth instead. Hegde says his bags, if produced at scale, are much cheaper than the alternatives. And, he adds, they’re stronger and disposable – and will take only 45 days to decompose if left in the mud.

His success has unnerved a thriving polymer industry. Four million Indians are employed by the plastics industry, most of them in small and medium-sized enterprises. Undocumented, underground plastic manufacturers also sell cheap bags, ignoring government regulations about manufacturing standards.

Hegde says he has received threatening phone calls from competitors. “In India there is a big, plastic mafia. I have got phone calls saying, ‘We will steal your technology, we will stop you.’ I don’t know who these calls are from so I have never registered a complaint,” he says.

He dismisses the threats as part of doing business in India. “I am not bothered by them. They feel they’ve been here for years, that they have experience. But I’m not backing down.”