UFlex, India’s largest flexible-packaging company and global leader in polymer sciences has become a member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a global non-profit organisation with a mission to eliminate plastic waste in the environment. UFlex’s commitment to tackle the problem of plastic waste and its expertise to derive solutions and technologies that help recover and recycle post-consumer plastic waste and help plastic find a purpose beyond its original use has earned it a membership berth with the alliance, the company has said in a media release. 

Through this affiliation, UFlex aims to contribute to and guide the alliance and its members about sustainability practices that it has been following for years to mitigate plastic waste issues, thus globalising these practises as also to learn and implement universally-accepted practices. With support from the alliance, UFlex also intends to promote and drive sustainable actions within the regions where it is present as a packaging company, the release has added. 

Founded in 2019, the alliance today has a global network of corporations, project partners and supporters across the plastics value chain. It undertakes joint initiatives with member organisations across the world to minimise and manage plastic waste in the environment. Towards this, it adopts a quadrangular approach to take collective actions, which include – development of infrastructure for collection and management of plastic waste; innovation and creation of new technologies to advance a circular economy for plastic waste; education and engagement with various stakeholders to mobilise action towards meaningful solutions; and clean-up of areas by working with partners to address plastic waste at source. 

Jacob Duer, the president and chief executive officer of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, has said: “As the issue of plastic waste moves up in the global sustainability agenda, our mission to develop, deploy and scale up solutions to end plastic waste in the environment is more relevant than ever before.” 

As an industry leader in building sustainable, flexible-packaging solutions, UFlex values conservation of planet over profits and believes in the approach of 4 Rs to tackle the challenge of reducing stock and flow of plastic waste in the environment, namely – reduce plastic at source by manufacturing and using films made from PCR; recycle via upcycling and downcycling of MLP (multi-layered plastic) and PET bottles; reuse as source substitution via Pyrolysis; and return to the planet in the form of biomass, if the plastic waste remains uncollected, the media release has said. 

“Plastic waste crisis is one of the most pressing global concerns of today, and as a socially-conscious organisation that has sustainability firmly entrenched at its very soul, we are aware that we need to find a solution collectively to enable coexistence of plastic and human race. The alliance is the ideal forum for us to bolster our efforts and rewrite the overall story of how plastic waste can be repurposed for good,” UFlex Chairman and Managing Director Ashok Chaturvedi has said.