Farmers for Forests grows biodiverse forests with smallholder farmers across Maharashtra. Without® recovers the plastic almost nobody else can. Two Pune organisations, one run of products, made start to finish from waste that had nowhere else to go.
Signage for the plots, keychains and coasters for the team and the people who back them. One recovered material, three very different jobs.
Farmers for Forests backs the work with carbon credits. We hand back chip packets that will never reach a landfill.
Four steps. Here is exactly how a pile of chip packets became the signage, keychains and coasters Farmers for Forests use.
Used chip packets and metallised wrappers, the plastic almost nobody can recycle, gathered and sorted by hand.
VerdiCycle separates the metallised layer and recovers the polymer at 120°C in water. No burning, no solvents. Out comes VerdiFLX.
Pressed into sheet, then laser-cut and printed. Boards for the signage, small flat parts for the keychains and coasters, all off the same batch.
Signage goes up on farm plots and protected forest and stands through monsoon after monsoon. The keychains and coasters go out to the team, partners and supporters.
Two from Without® in Pune, two from Farmers for Forests.
Used to pick waste to survive. Now runs the sorting and shredding section, and pays her three children's school fees without loans. Every packet that ends up as a sign, a keychain or a coaster passes her line first.
Years in store assembly and dispatch, then six months picking waste when the contract ended. Now runs a production line at Without®. A father of two.
[ Two or three lines from F4F: what this person does on the ground, how long they have been with the team, and where these pieces ended up. ]
[ Two or three lines from F4F: the farmer whose land carries one of these signs, what was growing there before, and what is growing there now. ]
Multilayer plastic is the metallised film inside a chip packet. Less than 1% of it is recycled anywhere in the world. VerdiFLX can go back through the process up to 10 times, against 2 to 3 for standard recycled plastic. Independent validation pending.
