In India, We Saw the Plastic Problem Firsthand — And an Inspiring Path Forward 

How do you even begin to comprehend a global issue as large as plastic pollution? 

Caleb Hulsey, Thrive Market’s Senior Category Manager, has always had an interest in helping to solve the plastic problem. He cut down on his own day-to-day plastic use, instituted a 52-week challenge for co-workers to address their footprint, and he even went so far as to visit plastic recycling centers in the U.S. to see how things operate. So when the opportunity presented itself to visit a plastic processing site in India with rePurpose Global, a nonprofit organization that aims to tackle plastic waste worldwide, Hulsey volunteered to go see the problem firsthand. 

A Plastic Pilgrimage 

rePurpose Global is a Plastic Action Platform that helps companies — including Thrive Market! — address their plastic usage. Using an action-oriented toolkit, companies can work to:

• Account for their own plastic footprint
• Reduce their own plastic waste by analyzing their packaging and identifying areas for improvement (such as searching for material alternatives and setting internal goals for reduction)
• Support plastic waste removal and recycling programs around the world
• Learn to communicate about these important issues with customers and community members 

Hulsey’s trip centered around these plastic recovery programs. He was invited to India to meet up with the rePurpose Global team to tour some of the plastic processing sites that the organization helps to fund, and to see firsthand where Thrive Market’s support is going.

India is especially impacted by plastic pollution because the country’s government accepts shipments of plastic waste from other countries that are unable to process certain types of materials. This, along with India’s own single-use plastic pollution, has led to plastic waste that clogs the streets, litters otherwise scenic natural areas, and, as Hulsey mentions, even infiltrates the country’s famed religious monuments.

Hulsey describes India’s culture as “very entrepreneurial,” which drives some community members to become informal waste collectors, gathering materials with any sort of value in hopes of supporting their families. “There will be an empty lot somewhere in a community with a mountain of trash,” Hulsey explains. Informal, unpaid waste workers collect valuable metal or rigid plastics from the trash, and in bigger sites, may use heavy machinery to move more sizable loads of waste.  

Despite government audits, these sites are unhygienic and very dangerous; the plastic mixed among the garbage creates landslide risks during and after rain (Hulsey mentions an instance just a few weeks before he arrived when a trash heap collapsed and killed some of the workers). “These [plastic dumping sites] exist everywhere in India,” Hulsey says. “It is not just in rural areas, and it’s not just in cities. You can’t even imagine the scale.” 

Addressing the Plastic Problem 

While Hulsey was shocked to see the magnitude of the plastic crisis in India, he was also just as impacted by the work that rePurpose Global is doing to combat it.

His trip began with a visit to an urban plastic processing site, which included lessons from rePurpose Global team members about how the sites operate and the work they’re doing on the ground. Workers manually separate the waste on a long conveyor belt, collecting any valuables to sell for funds to run the facility and sending the rest to a co-processor to be burned as fuel. 

Part of what makes India’s plastic problem so complex is that waste workers who would, in other countries, help to process trash and recycling, are viewed as “untouchable” in India’s caste system (a social hierarchy that divides citizens by things like religion and family). “It’s seen as low value, low quality work, and no one really wants to do it,” Hulsey explains. 

One of the projects that Thrive Market supports has created a formalized waste collection system in communities that didn’t previously have one. Teams will either go house to house to collect waste, or they set up communal trash receptacles for the whole community. “What’s really great is it employs the local community,” Hulsey says. “It creates this flywheel effect of seeing your neighbors doing something that they’re proud of by cleaning up the community, which incentivizes the neighbors to do the same thing. The people are proud to work there.”

On the second day of the trip, the group ventured out of the city and into the Himalayan Mountains to tour a more rural plastic site. This site had less oversight from the government, and the natural areas around it were polluted with plastic runoff. “A lot of tourists come to India for outdoor adventures, hiking, and these epic, beautiful landscapes,” Hulsey says. “And then there’s just plastic littering every square inch.” The group spent a few hours cleaning up the area they visited, but Hulsey says that when they left, he felt like they “didn’t even make a dent”. 

The last stop on the tour was the largest plastic processing facility that Thrive Market supports, located on the coast of the Arabian Sea. Hulsey was amazed to see the vast difference in the three facilities he’d visited. “[This one] rivaled the facilities across the U.S. that I’ve been to,” he says. “It was run as efficiently, as cleanly as any one that I had seen in the States.” 

The team spent a few hours at this final facility, meeting the workers and getting to see their support in action. “Everyone was so pleased that we came to visit and wanted to talk, and it was really uplifting,” Hulsey says. He attributes this positive attitude to the fact that this facility was tackling the plastic problem in a real, tangible way that felt like it could be replicated. “There is something being done that you can feel good about, given the whole situation. It’s not just all sad stories.”

Creating Value for People & Planet 

While he left India feeling the gravity of the plastic problem, Hulsey also left with a renewed belief that the work rePurpose Global is doing is the best path forward. 

“It hit me harder than I even expected it to,” he says. “You get there and you just feel defeated — the scale of it is immeasurable. And so you’re just like, what can we do? What was cool about this experience was it showed that there are solutions that are having an impact. rePurpose Global is investing in technologies that will move along the value for low valuable materials in a meaningful way […] It actually could create economic value for people all over the planet, whether it’s the waste workers who now have a reason to collect the materials, or just incentivize other people to do more about the issue.” 

How We’re Reducing Our Plastic Footprint With Help From rePurpose Global 

“What’s cool about rePurpose Global is that they’ve built all these processes so that anyone can start at any level anywhere in the world,” Hulsey says. 

It’s true — rePurpose Global’s plastic action plan is easy, accessible, and tailored to each unique organization’s needs. To better understand how it works, here’s a look at Thrive Market’s progress with rePurpose Global. 

In 2023, we became Plastic Neutral Certified with rePurpose Global by adhering to the following steps:

1. Our team at Thrive Market gathers and measures all data related to our plastic use from packaging for Thrive Market brands (including Thrive Market Goods, Rosey, wellmade, and f.a.e.), as well as plastic shipping materials used in member orders. 
2. We send those numbers to the team at rePurpose Global so they have a clear picture of exactly how much plastic we’re using.  
3. For every pound of plastic we use, rePurpose Global comes back to us with projects we can invest in that remove that same amount of ocean-bound or nature-bound plastic waste.
4. rePurpose Global continues to measure how many verified plastic removal credits we’ve financed and compares them to how much plastic we’re using in order to help us achieve plastic neutrality.
5. Our progress is consistently monitored and tracked. Based on our chosen projects, the team at rePurpose Global regularly shares updated, verified data on the impact we are creating. We’ve also partnered with rePurpose Global to create a Plastic Action Working Group that helps other brands achieve the same progress toward plastic reduction. 

“rePurpose Global isn’t just collecting waste, they’ve created a platform for people to improve their lives, improve the environment, and to add economic value for the communities that they’re a part of,” Hulsey says.

Learn more about how we’re tackling our plastic usage and our plastic reduction work with rePurpose Global:

Thrive Market is Now Plastic Neutral Certified! Here’s What That Means
How Thrive Market and rePurpose Global Are Encouraging Brands to Reduce Their Plastic Use
What is Sustainable Packaging? Here’s What It Means at Thrive Market