A Fund Manager's Relationship with Plastic

“Planet or plastic?” This was a poignant question posed by a series of stories published in the National Geographic magazine in 2018, about the global plastic problem. Two years later, the situation is no better.

- Aparajita Saxena

Disposing plastic is not easy. An estimated 8 billion tons of plastic waste enters oceans annually, via land use, and makes up as much as 95 per cent of all marine litter today. And Asia is the biggest culprit of all because most of the plastic affluent in the ocean comes from Asia - mainly China and Southeast Asia - in the form of single-use plastic, a majority of which is used for packaging purposes.

The start-up space though has been buzzing with innovative ideas and solutions to solve the problem using state-of-the-art technology, nanobots, and artificial intelligence, and even though external investment has been slow, more and more venture capital firms have been getting interested in companies with a social angle.