Management and Entrepreneurship | Social Entrepreneurship
Turning Mysuru's plastic waste into pavers and solid blocks.
Watch a block being madeMysuru makes about 550 tonnes of waste every day
Sources: Mysuru City Corporation officer in Deccan Herald; CPCB data via PIB. Full links are in the report.
Play with 9,000 pieces of plastic
Thin film is light, colourful and everywhere. Pick a shape and watch the loose flakes pull together, then push your pointer through them.
Drawn live in your browser from code. Not a photo and not a video.
The honest numbers
A red clay brick in Mysuru is listed at about Rs 10. Our pilot model gives Rs 10 to Rs 24, depending on what we pay for plastic.
Market: Mysuru dealer listing and a price tracker. Ittige: our model with labelled assumptions. Ittige matches clay only if plastic is nearly free or the city pays to have it taken.
Try the numbers yourself
Drag the plastic price and watch the cost of one brick change. It is the same model as the report. Labour, power, transport and overhead are our assumptions, and you can test them too.
Cost to make one brick
Rs 15.23
Dearer than clay by Rs 5.23
With these settings the city would have to pay Ittige about Rs 0.75 per kg to take the plastic for Ittige to match clay.
The unit makes about 1,100 bricks a day and costs about Rs 16,750 a day to run.
Model output for a pilot taking in 1 tonne of plastic a day, with 3 kg bricks. Clay is the Mysuru dealer price of about Rs 10. At 20% plastic the unit makes more bricks a day, so the extra work may raise labour and machine costs: tick the box to see that case. This is a planning model, not a forecast.
Why packaging film, not bottles
Bottles (PET)
About 90% are already collected and collectors are paid for them. Studies disagree on whether PET or LDPE is stronger with sand, so the real reason is the market: bottles already have buyers and film does not.
Film and caps
Carry bags and milk pouches are LDPE film, and caps are PP or HDPE. Low value, often no buyer, and they bind well with sand when melted. Layered sachets stay out until tested. The bottle in the animation is only a hook.