Meet Surat’s entrepreneur and innovator who wants India to be zero-waste country by 2025

As children all of us dream but very few are able to make them come true. In the case of Dr. Binish Desai aka the Recycle Man of India he made this happen by hard work, grit and innovative ideas as he turned waste into wealth.

This 29-year-old social entrepreneur’s Eco Eclectic Tech as per a asia.nikkei.com report makes use of industrial waste to make materials used for constructing buildings and structures. This innovator from Surat, Gujarat, who specialises in industrial waste recycling has a Master degree in Environmental Engineering and an honorary PhD in Environmental Sci and Technology.

Watching the American television series “Captain Planet and the Planeteers” triggered in Desai an ambition not just to save the environment and the planet but also do something tangible about it. Being inquisitive, creative and wanting to learn, his first machine changed vapour in the kitchen to water which was used for gardening.

The thought of turning waste into building blocks germinated when he was merely 11. Having forgotten a chewing gum wrapped in a paper in his trouser pocket, he found it couple of days later as a hardened solid block. Speaking to Life Beyond Numbers he said: “This gave me an idea to come up with advanced brick 1.0. In 2010, at the age of 16, I founded my firm, Eco-Eclectic Tech Group.”

Deeply moved by deplorable housing for poverty-stricken people, he experimented to mix varied materials like wheat flour and paper mill waste and gum to produced durable materials. Today the advanced version brick is made of waste paper and binders. Further, finding used personal protective equipment and surgical masks in strewn all over, he added those too. Today it accounts for 52 per cent of the total components.

These bricks are three times stronger than the conventional red ones. Apart from this, they are lighter, recyclable and can be nicely plastered while it costs half as much the standard bricks.

The manufacturing of the bricks besides being eco-friendly also provides employment to the rural women thereby empowering them. Hundreds of these women belonging to the underprivileged sections from villages are employed for making the bricks.

Last year on the occasion of World Environment Day observed on June 5, NH Studioz announced a biopic on this celebrated environmentalist. Speaking about it the Studioz’s Shreyans Hirawat said the film is about the journey of a man to save the planet while aiming to inspire the new generation as to how they can fulfil their dreams irrespective of their age, without any means and from a remote place.

Seeking to spread awareness about the environment, the biopic will be shot with zero carbon emissions. Desai himself has placed measures of sustainability on sets adhering to no waste policy.

Desai is keen to see India emerge as a leading solution provider of zero-waste technologies which are made locally but sold globally. In a report Hindustan Times quoting him mentioned: “India has recycling and reuse in our culture and, our moms are the biggest recyclers. So let us get inspired by our roots and innovate.”

Aiming high he wants India to be a zero-waste country by 2025.