Resh­ma Ra­goonath

US busi­ness­man and sci­en­tist Dr Mike Bid­dle is liv­ing proof of the old say­ing, "One man's trash is an­oth­er man's trea­sure." He has turned trash in­to a bil­lion-dol­lar re­cy­cling busi­ness.Now he's call­ing on Caribbean busi­ness­men to cap­i­talise on the mon­ey-mak­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that re­cy­cling of­fers.Bid­dle, founder and pres­i­dent of MBA Poly­mers, a com­pa­ny based in Rich­mond, Cal­i­for­nia, told the Sun­day Guardian: "Garbage is prof­itable in suf­fi­cient vol­umes."

He said MBA Poly­mers, is the largest re­cy­cler of plas­tics from com­plex waste streams–elec­tron­ics, ap­pli­ances, au­to­mo­biles and even mu­nic­i­pal sol­id waste that no­body wants to use.In a re­cent in­ter­view in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, Bid­dle said Caribbean busi­ness­men have am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties in en­vi­ron­ment-re­lat­ed busi­ness­es like re­cy­cling.

"In the Caribbean there is a lot of plas­tic and there is a strong de­sire to see it be re­cy­cled in­stead of throw­ing it to waste and I sus­pect there is a busi­ness case to be made," he said.Bid­dle sug­gest­ed a re­cy­cling in­dus­try in the re­gion with con­cen­tra­tion points on var­i­ous is­lands, in­clud­ing pro­cess­ing plants on one or two is­lands fed by sev­er­al is­lands.

Bid­dle, who was in Ja­maica to speak at the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN­EP) Land-Ocean Con­nec­tions (GLOC-2) con­fer­ence on ma­rine lit­ter, nu­tri­ents and waste wa­ter man­age­ment, ad­mit­ted that plas­tic re­cy­cling re­quires a hefty in­vest­ment.How­ev­er, he said, there is prof­itabil­i­ty in the in­dus­try as MBA Poly­mers has es­tab­lished op­er­a­tions in Chi­na, Aus­tria and the Unit­ed King­dom.In the Caribbean, he said, con­sumer aware­ness is key to mak­ing a re­cy­cling busi­ness suc­cess­ful.

"I think the chal­lenge is first aware­ness that it is pos­si­ble to re­cy­cle these high­ly com­plex and mixed plas­tics and sec­ond­ly fig­ur­ing out how to ag­gre­gate suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties of it so that you can do it cost ef­fec­tive­ly," he said.Bid­dle said there is no sin­gle fig­ure that can be used in start­ing a re­cy­cling busi­ness since it could range from US$1 mil­lion to US$40 mil­lion and de­pends on the size and how so­phis­ti­cat­ed the pro­cess­ing of the ma­te­ri­als would be.

About MBA Poly­mers

MBA Poly­mers start­ed in Bid­dle's garage in 1992. Back then he was work­ing in the plas­tics in­dus­try and al­ways felt there was a bet­ter way to make plas­tics us­ing waste rather than oils.With 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence un­der his belt, Bid­dle con­vinced his then em­ploy­er to give him a shot at re­search­ing and de­vel­op­ing his idea. He was suc­cess­ful in his re­search in us­ing waste to make plas­tics, but the em­ploy­er turned down his idea.

"They said they were not in the busi­ness of garbage, so I went out on my own about 20 years ago and since then made about three evo­lu­tions in the com­pa­ny as R and D (Re­search and De­vel­op­ment), as a demon­stra­tion com­pa­ny and fi­nal­ly now as a glob­al pro­duc­er of re­cy­cled plas­tics," he said.Bid­dle said the com­pa­ny still has some way to go be­fore it is "suc­cess­ful."

"I have to make a lot of mon­ey. These are very ex­pen­sive plants and we are still work­ing on get­ting all that in­vest­ment back. It takes a long time. It is huge in­vest­ments," he said.He said one of the main ob­sta­cles his com­pa­ny faces is get­ting ac­cess to suf­fi­cient amounts of ma­te­r­i­al.

"It sounds a lit­tle crazy be­cause there is so much plas­tic in the world but our biggest chal­lenge is mak­ing sure we can se­cure suf­fi­cient ma­te­r­i­al to feed a very large scale plant. These plants have to be large to do it in a way that pro­tects the en­vi­ron­ment and in a way that pro­tects peo­ple," he ex­plained.Bid­dle said his hope is that plas­tic re­cy­cling takes off and the glob­al prob­lem of plas­tics waste is solved.

"I think I am no dif­fer­ent from any­body else. I want to make dif­fer­ence and I am hap­py I am able and feel ex­treme­ly lucky to ne able to lever­age my ed­u­ca­tion­al train­ing and my busi­ness train­ing in an area that can make a dif­fer­ence," he said.He added that as a fa­ther of two he wants to en­sure that his chil­dren get to en­joy the en­vi­ron­ment for years to come."I hope I can have an im­pact on fu­ture gen­er­a­tions and I can leave them in a bet­ter place than I found them and I can mo­ti­vate them to fol­low their pas­sion.

"It is not just about get­ting more peo­ple to care about the en­vi­ron­ment, it is try­ing to tell peo­ple to fol­low their pas­sion even if it is not the en­vi­ron­ment," Bid­dle said.