Suchitra’s story

“Maybe the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals were unrealistic, but they’ve put us on the right path,” says the Indian-born Suchitra. “I think many of us quietly wanted to help the planet, which has given us so much abundance, and the UN’s goals made us realize it was our turn to reimagine the way we do business. Many businesses are striving to become sustainable, even though it was a forced hand. Now everyone is mindful of doing as little damage as possible.”

I think many of us quietly wanted to help the planet, which has given us so much abundance, and the UN’s goals made us realize it was our turn to reimagine the way we do business.

This is an extraordinary remark when you consider that publicly traded Indorama Ventures makes the raw material used in plastic bottles, to many environmentalists the very definition of modern industrial horror. Still, the stated purpose of Indorama Ventures – a world-leading chemicals manufacturer with $18.7 billion in 2022 revenue – is “reimagining chemistry together to create a better world.”

Polyethylene terephthalate, commonly known as PET, is a clear, strong, and lightweight plastic. However, unlike other plastics which are discarded after single use, PET is 100% recyclable, and is in fact “made to be remade,” as the American Beverage Association snappily puts it. When collected in a relatively pure state, PET bottles can be melted down and converted into flakes or pellets, which are then fed back into the bottle-making process. Typically, 5% to 20% of a new bottle is made from this recycled material, the rest created from so-called virgin PET. But recycled PET can also be spun into carpet fibers or even used in car production, and Indorama Ventures is a global leader in such PET and fiber products.

That acquisition helped turn Indorama Ventures into the world’s largest recycler

The thing to note here: the firm’s Sustainability journey started in 2011, when Indorama acquired Wellman International’s assets in Europe. Wellman, recycling 1.6 billion used plastic bottles a year, was a leading manufacturer of polyester staple fiber products and recycled PET flakes.

That acquisition helped turn Indorama Ventures into the world’s largest recycler. It was, a purely business-driven decision. At the time, the Lohia family wanted Indorama Ventures to become vertically integrated and own the entire PET manufacturing process, from recycled flakes to new PET product, all processed for customers like Coke, Pepsi, Danone, and their various bottlers. “There was some vision that at some point this all needs to be recycled and the recycling needs to be taken care of inhouse,” Suchitra says.

Since the UN’s Sustainability Goals were articulated, Indorama Venture’s prescient business objective has turned into a social and environmental imperative, with the EU Commission mandating, for example, that 20% to 30% of all new bottles be made of recycled content by 2025 and 2030 respectively. Her husband’s new dream, Suchitra says, is to not “see one bottle on the ground,” part of the bottling industry’s grand initiative to “get every bottle back.”

Becoming a leader in the “circular economy” is easier said than done

Becoming a leader in the “circular economy” is easier said than done. “The biggest issue is not technical,” Suchitra explains. “The technical operations are easy. It's the collection. The world lacks the necessary infrastructure as far as bottle collection goes.”

In developing countries, recycling is the business of the poor, with an army of scavengers pouring over landfills and retrieving whatever has been discarded but still has value. In Thailand, for example, 89% of all solid waste is recycled, according to the World Bank, and Indorama Ventures can, in theory, purchase used PET bottles relatively cheaply in such emerging economies. The problem here, Suchitra says, is the scavengers’ level of education and the recycling industry’s general sanitary conditions.

“The world is now trying to separate from the general waste the plastics and the aluminum and bottles and so on. That is requiring a lot of education, which is why we are working on a Recycling Global Education Program, particularly in Thailand and Indonesia.”

We want to educate the coming generation that these bottles are resources and not to be treated like waste.

In Thailand, Indorama Ventures is running a 500-school educational initiative. “We want to educate the coming generation that these bottles are resources and not to be treated like waste. PET is not a normal plastic, it's different, something which is part of our daily life, and which we cannot wish away because there is no substitute that makes life so easy for all of us. The children listen, they agree – and they teach their parents at home.”

In the developed nations, meanwhile, there is of course a costly industrialized recycling system in place, with municipal or privately-run side-loader trucks rumbling down back alleys to empty out pre-sorted recycle bins. In this case, Suchitra says, the collection system generally fails for logistics reasons – the collection points in the U.S. are, for example, simply too far away from the bottle producers – and the economies of the stand-alone recycling plants aren’t nearly of the scale needed to be competitive. Recycled PET product is, for these reasons, generally 50% more expensive than virgin PET product, according to Suchitra.

The answer, she says, is for PET suppliers like Indorama Ventures and the bottlers themselves to build their own network of collection centers closer to their PET recycling plants, so they can capture profits along the entire supply chain and thereby defray recycling costs. Indorama Ventures fully intends to be at the heart of this wholesale infrastructure transformation, and, according to its public statements, it is committed to spending $3.7 billion on its recycling operations over the next seven years.

The answer, she says, is for PET suppliers like Indorama Ventures and the bottlers themselves to build their own network of collection centers

New bottles can be entirely made of recycled PET, Suchitra says, but a 100%-recycled bottle takes on an opaque or grey color, which until recently has been a major turn off for consumers purchasing bottled water. But Indorama Ventures now believes that sophisticated consumers around the world are, like the “forced hand” companies themselves, overcoming their initial qualms for the greater Sustainability good. That’s probably why FIJI Water, among other brands, recently had the confidence to announce its bottles in the U.S. market will be 100% made with recycled PET by 2025. These private sector achievements are already well beyond the mandates of even the EU Commission and the State of California (where 65% of plastics must be recycled by 2032.)

The Lohia family is doing more than just recycling PET to reach the UN’s Sustainability goals. It has, for example, committed $4.7 billion to its 'biomass feedstock' business, so that even its surfactant products —compounds used in cosmetics and cleaning agents—will increasingly be made with 'green' materials. A further $630 million is being invested to lower the company’s carbon footprint. Meanwhile, over at the Lohia’s family office, Suchitra has with her daughter created Volta Circle, a fund that invests in sustainable food systems, technologies that can reduce businesses’ environmental impact, and tools that increase access to healthcare and education.

As entrepreneurs and investors, we believe that we have to balance impact with returns,” Suchitra says.

“As entrepreneurs and investors, we believe that we have to balance impact with returns,” Suchitra says. “It’s what our family believes – and our corporate thesis. So, our endeavor, constantly, is how we percolate this down to our 26,000 employees. It's out there for them to see and read about, but we want it to be part of the company’s DNA – and that requires constant effort.”

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