Calvin Frost02.27.24
Have any of you been to India? If not, you need to put India on your “bucket list.” You need to experience the sights and sounds and smells. You need to appreciate its rich culture, its many dialects (over 200), its diversity of religions, the complexities of new and old, its great ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Most of all, in my view, India is a country of conundrums.
Therefore, at times, it can be puzzling and full of unknowns.
I just spent two weeks in India trying to convince 1.4 billion people that there’s a better way. That climate change is coming, is here with all its traumatic and extreme patterns, and everyone in India needs to do their part to change.
The response was, “How much will it cost?” Of course, why not! It’s exactly the same question I get here, in the Western Hemisphere, so you might say nothing’s different in India. But, of course, that is because every city we visited, every factory we toured, was reusing and recycling. In fact, India is probably the most prominent recycler in the world. They take the materials from the West that we don’t want or can’t use. You can’t think of climate change in India without realizing that their culture solves material obsolescence for the West.
And this very fact is fascinating. We, in the West, generate materials that have no further life. India takes these materials and finds “new life” in very creative ways. Indeed, I might suggest that India solves the problems we create. Obsolete, off spec, unusable materials generated by our packaging industries find a “new life” in India. Therefore, India helps us.
They reduce the amount of material destined for the landfill, hence reducing gas emissions, which are caused by methane, which is generated in landfills. Fascinating!
My partner and I visited four cities and countless companies. There were three themes in every city and in every meeting: traffic (would we get to the next meeting on time?), air quality (were we going to get sick?), and packaging (just plain huge volumes). The traffic was horrendous and congestion part of daily life. A visit to a factory, 15-20 miles from the hotel, would take 1-2 hours, depending on the time of day. And, it might take 2-2.5 hours to get back to base.
We rode in only one hybrid and saw only one charging station (at our hotel). I was told hybrids were quite common, but I only saw this one. Rickshaws were everywhere. These are three and four wheeled, open sided carts, gas powered and belching carbon dioxide while weaving dangerously through and around traffic and pedestrians. The air quality, particularly in New Delhi, was horrible.
Despite all of these distractions, we had to admire the graciousness and spirit of everyone we visited. Our trip was focused on packaging and packaging materials. We saw incredible ingenuity in the use of materials for every imaginable packaging application. There was no waste in any of the manufacturing facilities that we visited. Every piece of every material was printed, stamped, embossed, folded, twisted, or laminated. In fact, in many of the factories we visited, substantial quantities of their raw materials were actually our byproducts.
Paper and film packaging materials were arriving daily in 40-foot containers. These materials were damaged or off-spec in the West but seemed to be one of the “staples” for Indian converters. Packaging in India (to be sure, not all), is using what we in the West can’t use or don’t want to use. Ingenuity and creativity is alive and well in India.
In many ways, the current Indian environment reminds me of China 40 years ago: creativity created by necessity! Certainly we visited very sophisticated companies using virgin product and processing these materials with state of the art technology. And, of course, all the major multi-national manufacturers and brands were present.
Who wouldn’t be with demand from such a large population. But, it was the “grey market” that I found fascinating and certainly was driving a very diverse packaging industry.
My trip and time in India was exciting and mind-opening, and an experience not soon forgotten and one which I urge everyone to experience.
Notwithstanding my fascination with the Indian “grey-market,” I want to close with a brief outline of some of the new technologies that were discussed at COP28 that are being used to fight climate change:
• Carbon Capture – It is apparent that our world just can’t turn off carbon dioxide any time soon. If this is true, trying to reduce CO2 is fruitless. The latest approach is to “capture it and store it underground.” Or, use it as a raw material for other products. (Now, I think that’s novel and smacks of how the Indians think!) The US is funding two projects with an investment of one billion dollars. In total these plants would eliminate two million tons of CO2 per year.
• Nuclear Fusion – Nuclear fusion (NF) is seen as the solution to the world’s growing hunger for energy. This won’t change any time soon. The fusion of atoms releases large amounts of energy. Unlike nuclear power plants, NF produces virtually no harmful radiation or waste. However, and this is the current state of the technology, the process required is expensive and the energy produced difficult to use. Stay tuned!
• “Green” Hydrogen – I’ve written about this in the past. Green hydrogen (GH) is produced by the electrolytes of water, using renewable electricity. Production of GH produces significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than production of grey-hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels without carbon capture. GH is the only fuel that has the potential to completely decarbonize every part of the economy. Maybe this is why the US has approved seven billion dollars to several companies as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA).
While there were plenty of other technologies discussed at COP28, my recent trip to India suggests that here and now, without any investment, may present part of the solution – diversion of non-processable materials from the landfill.
India may be a conundrum in many ways. But, it seems to me it is also the “breadbasket” of opportunity for materials that the rest of the world doesn’t want. In effect, it is making a very real contribution to solving our climate crisis. Thank you, India.
Another Letter from the Earth.
Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address is cfrost@channeledresources.com.
Therefore, at times, it can be puzzling and full of unknowns.
I just spent two weeks in India trying to convince 1.4 billion people that there’s a better way. That climate change is coming, is here with all its traumatic and extreme patterns, and everyone in India needs to do their part to change.
The response was, “How much will it cost?” Of course, why not! It’s exactly the same question I get here, in the Western Hemisphere, so you might say nothing’s different in India. But, of course, that is because every city we visited, every factory we toured, was reusing and recycling. In fact, India is probably the most prominent recycler in the world. They take the materials from the West that we don’t want or can’t use. You can’t think of climate change in India without realizing that their culture solves material obsolescence for the West.
And this very fact is fascinating. We, in the West, generate materials that have no further life. India takes these materials and finds “new life” in very creative ways. Indeed, I might suggest that India solves the problems we create. Obsolete, off spec, unusable materials generated by our packaging industries find a “new life” in India. Therefore, India helps us.
They reduce the amount of material destined for the landfill, hence reducing gas emissions, which are caused by methane, which is generated in landfills. Fascinating!
My partner and I visited four cities and countless companies. There were three themes in every city and in every meeting: traffic (would we get to the next meeting on time?), air quality (were we going to get sick?), and packaging (just plain huge volumes). The traffic was horrendous and congestion part of daily life. A visit to a factory, 15-20 miles from the hotel, would take 1-2 hours, depending on the time of day. And, it might take 2-2.5 hours to get back to base.
We rode in only one hybrid and saw only one charging station (at our hotel). I was told hybrids were quite common, but I only saw this one. Rickshaws were everywhere. These are three and four wheeled, open sided carts, gas powered and belching carbon dioxide while weaving dangerously through and around traffic and pedestrians. The air quality, particularly in New Delhi, was horrible.
Despite all of these distractions, we had to admire the graciousness and spirit of everyone we visited. Our trip was focused on packaging and packaging materials. We saw incredible ingenuity in the use of materials for every imaginable packaging application. There was no waste in any of the manufacturing facilities that we visited. Every piece of every material was printed, stamped, embossed, folded, twisted, or laminated. In fact, in many of the factories we visited, substantial quantities of their raw materials were actually our byproducts.
Paper and film packaging materials were arriving daily in 40-foot containers. These materials were damaged or off-spec in the West but seemed to be one of the “staples” for Indian converters. Packaging in India (to be sure, not all), is using what we in the West can’t use or don’t want to use. Ingenuity and creativity is alive and well in India.
In many ways, the current Indian environment reminds me of China 40 years ago: creativity created by necessity! Certainly we visited very sophisticated companies using virgin product and processing these materials with state of the art technology. And, of course, all the major multi-national manufacturers and brands were present.
Who wouldn’t be with demand from such a large population. But, it was the “grey market” that I found fascinating and certainly was driving a very diverse packaging industry.
My trip and time in India was exciting and mind-opening, and an experience not soon forgotten and one which I urge everyone to experience.
Notwithstanding my fascination with the Indian “grey-market,” I want to close with a brief outline of some of the new technologies that were discussed at COP28 that are being used to fight climate change:
• Carbon Capture – It is apparent that our world just can’t turn off carbon dioxide any time soon. If this is true, trying to reduce CO2 is fruitless. The latest approach is to “capture it and store it underground.” Or, use it as a raw material for other products. (Now, I think that’s novel and smacks of how the Indians think!) The US is funding two projects with an investment of one billion dollars. In total these plants would eliminate two million tons of CO2 per year.
• Nuclear Fusion – Nuclear fusion (NF) is seen as the solution to the world’s growing hunger for energy. This won’t change any time soon. The fusion of atoms releases large amounts of energy. Unlike nuclear power plants, NF produces virtually no harmful radiation or waste. However, and this is the current state of the technology, the process required is expensive and the energy produced difficult to use. Stay tuned!
• “Green” Hydrogen – I’ve written about this in the past. Green hydrogen (GH) is produced by the electrolytes of water, using renewable electricity. Production of GH produces significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than production of grey-hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels without carbon capture. GH is the only fuel that has the potential to completely decarbonize every part of the economy. Maybe this is why the US has approved seven billion dollars to several companies as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA).
While there were plenty of other technologies discussed at COP28, my recent trip to India suggests that here and now, without any investment, may present part of the solution – diversion of non-processable materials from the landfill.
India may be a conundrum in many ways. But, it seems to me it is also the “breadbasket” of opportunity for materials that the rest of the world doesn’t want. In effect, it is making a very real contribution to solving our climate crisis. Thank you, India.
Another Letter from the Earth.
Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address is cfrost@channeledresources.com.