The Story Of Gatta Tech! A New Idea Of Converting Waste Plastic Into Something Valuable
Mangaluru: Our journey began in 2016 when we decided to contribute to increasing our country’s appearance. With over 500 successful clean-ups and over 100 tonnes of waste collected, plastic seemed to be the ugliest material.
With a lot of research and raw attempts, we managed to identify that shrinking would be the fastest form of getting rid of the plastic issue and also converting it into something valuable would open a new area to research upon. There begins the story of Gatta Tech.
Interested in scaling this creative product to an achievable platform, Marvin Fernandes with the help of Urjita Parkar, founder of The Coriander Cave, a plant-based lifestyle research centre, decided to meet Er. Rajendra Kalbavi, Executive Director, D.K. Nirmiti Kendra, Surathkal, Karnataka.
Er Kalbavi stated, let us get this into shape and formulate this into a point where this material could help the high demand in the construction sector as my expertise lies in civil industry. So with the help of the DK Nirmiti Kendra team, Marvin Fernandes, an environmentalist and a researcher along with Urjita Parkar, the analyst of the project, prepared multiple shapes and sizes of bricks from the waste collected from in and around Mangalore city, riverbanks and villages. Marvin said, this solution needs no additional chemicals apart from untreated plastic waste, contaminated powdered waste, construction debris and proper machinery and then this could speed up the cleaning process which is undoubtedly still an issue.
To add to this, Urjita said if civil-related sectors support this mission, it could lay off the tremendous burden, first from the mining that is done on Mother Nature and lastly it seems to be cost-efficient. Finally, Kalbavi concluded this is an excellent product but fitting it into the current construction industry will require people and developers to build a futuristic mindset and accept the current crisis to bring change.