Thank you for being here.

Title of this 50th essay comes from India Working: Essays on Society and Economy by Prof. Barbara Harriss-White (Oxford).

This book found me at the right time.

I was then trying to understand India’s e-waste recycling industry through the narrow lens of my own discipline: supply chain management. Buyers, suppliers, material flows via formal and informal channels, pricing, and so on. Though it was useful, it was not sufficient and something was missing.

I remember interviewing one recycling business owner who had completed his MBA from a prominent IIM. When I asked him whether he had approached banks for business loans, he said:

I don’t go for loans. I don’t believe in interest. I neither take interest or pay interest. When I bought a Harley [motorcycle], I paid cash. If I have cash, I do my business. Because, interest is forbidden in our religion.

And to understand things like this, I badly needed a different lens.

When “religion” enters the business story

During my fieldwork, I slowly realized something that many industry insiders already know. That is, community networks based on religion and caste play an important role in recycling businesses in India.

Industry insiders acknowledge the prominence of Muslim communities in different parts of the e-waste recycling trade. To someone unfamiliar with the India context, bringing religion or caste into a business discussion can feel allergic.

I remember this feeling of discomfort from my own research days. When I presented interim findings to my doctoral advisory committee, I used to apologize for bringing it up. I would say something like:

Sorry to say this. This specific religion is coming up repeatedly in my interviews.

So stupid of me. Why was I apologizing for reporting what insiders were actually telling me? Because I was still trying to fit India into neat boxes? Or because topics like religion and caste felt too sensitive or too easy to misunderstand in a B-school?

If something keeps appearing in interviews, observations, and everyday business practice, then it is data. Yes, it is good qualitative data.

Thank God I came across books like India Working. They helped me stop apologizing for what the field was showing me.

What I saw in the field

There were days during my fieldwork when auto rickshaw drivers refused to take me to certain recycling locations. They openly told me they didn’t want to go there because of the religion of people living in that area. Several times, I had to wait for hours to find an auto driver willing to take me.

My maternal uncle has been in the leather tanning industry for more than three decades. He understands how certain communities are connected to particular sectors. And I have listened to those discussions when I was a kid.

So when I started seeing similar community patterns in e-waste recycling, it did not feel random or anecdotal. It was an important and recurring pattern.

Professions don’t emerge out of nothing

Prof. Barbara discusses how certain communities in India have historically been associated with particular occupations and industries. Muslim artisans, for example, have had a strong presence across many craft-based sectors:

In Uttar Pradesh, for example, Muslim artisans produce brassware in Moradabad; pottery in Khurja; glassware in Ferozabad; carpets in Bhadodi and Mirzapur; carpentry and woodwork in Sharanapur; hand printed textiles in Farrakhabad; cotton and silk embroidery in Varanasi; perfume manufacturing (to which the development of unani medicines is related) in Lucknow, Kanauj and Jaunpur; and handloom cloth in Mau. In Bihar, large numbers of Muslims are silk and cotton handloom weavers. Muslim workers dominate the bidri ware and carpet industries in Andhra Pradesh, and silkworm rearing and toy industries in Karnataka.

Professions associated with waste, animal bones, paper, metals, plastics, rubber, leather, repair, reuse, and recycling have also historically been taken up by particular communities.

This tradition may partly explain why Muslim communities are prominent in many parts of India’s e-waste recycling industry today. If we ignore this social history, we misunderstand the industry.

It is not only one community

This is not unique to Muslims or to e-waste.

There are Marwari Hindu communities deeply involved in scrap trading and plastic recycling businesses. Tiruppur became a world leader in knitted garments manufacturing, with the Gounder community playing a major role. Surat became one of the world’s major diamond cutting and polishing centres, with Patel community networks playing an important role.

Across India, many business sectors are shaped by community ties.

These ties decide who enters the business, who gets credit, who is trusted, who gets trained, who gets introduced to buyers, and who survives bad times.

I’m not saying that religion or caste alone can explain a business sector. That would be too simplistic. My point is that business in India sits within a larger web of social relations.

Faith is at the surface level. But behind faith, there are these networks of kinship and mutual dependence that drives business decisions.

Even in Silicon Valley, this web of social relations exist. They are easier to miss because they are dressed up in a much more sanitized way. Often called as ecosystems, alumni circles, investor access, masterminds, warm introductions.

Why all this matters for sustainability

Sustainability discussions in India still borrow heavily from Western textbooks and Western policies.

Look at these words: extended producer responsibility, formalization, traceability, professionalization.

If we use them without understanding India’s social structure, we will get shallow answers.

This is why books like India Working matter. They force us to step outside our narrow professional comfort zones.

First understand India

I keep saying this to friends during corridor conversations:

If we are studying any business sector in India, we need to first understand how India works. And most of us have no clue.

Many of us come from privileged backgrounds. We are trained through Western business and economics textbooks. Though they are useful as a starting point, India does not reveal itself through those frameworks alone.

If we ignore these nuances, we will still produce research. But we may not understand what we are researching.

We have, what I jokingly call, a “colonoscopic view” of India. Yes, I really mean that word: a narrow tube giving a deep internal view of a small body part.

What we need is a kaleidoscopic view with the many fragments, colors, and angles. The full mess. Only then, we begin to see how India actually works.

If you are an early-stage scholar, sustainability professional or someone trying to understand Indian business beyond PowerPoint frameworks, I strongly recommend India Working.

It can give you that rich kaleidoscopic view.

A small community note

Before I close, allow me to introduce Faris, a fellow member of this community. We met at Atta Galatta, an independent bookstore in Bangalore, during my book talk.

Faris and team have spent years across difficult social sector spaces: waste, wildlife, fishing communities, and more. The kind of work where neat frameworks meet messy realities.

If you are struggling with a high-stakes social impact project and need people who understand the field, you may want to speak with them: connect@insocia.in

Sharing this in the spirit of goodwill and community connection. Not a paid promotion.

P.S. Have you seen certain communities dominate particular industries in your own world? Do we talk about this frankly?

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being here and feel free to listen to this story.

Today’s issue begins in a sustainability conference.

This conference was organized by two top business schools to connect sustainability research and practice. One from India and one from US: IIM Bangalore and UNC Kenan-Flagler. Funded by a global grant involving the then American President and Indian Prime Minister. Big event.

(For your benefit, I’m willing to be vulnerable and share these details.)

The audience had faculty, PhD students, and many practitioners from industry.

One professor from UNC made a superb presentation on industrial symbiosis. He is big name. Professor in operations management (my home discipline). Editor of an elite American academic journal.

The presentation was heavy math. Lots of game theory, optimization models, top-end stuff. Intellectually impressive.

The time came for Q&A, as usual.

A practitioner in the audience raised his hand. A senior sustainability professional at a top company. Specifically, head of sustainability division at a W.I.T.C.H company. Yes, big role in a big company.

He asked politely: “What’s the purpose of all this? I don’t understand your results or your method. I don’t see the relevance. Have you spoken to real people and real companies?”

The professor was taken aback. His ego was bruised a bit. Publicly. See, traditional academicians don’t usually ask these questions so openly. It is rare. Very rare.

The professor replied: “There are two schools in research. Chicago school and Carnegie school. Chicago school does rigorous math modelling. Carnegie is into empirical methods. I belong to the Chicago school.”

Now, the practitioner was stunned. And the audience, which had many practitioners, was stunned too.

Because he had asked: “What’s the point?” And the reply was: “I belong to a school.”

I’m not sharing this to mock or glorify anyone. I’m sharing it because many of us sit on both sides of this tension.

A good model can simplify the world beautifully. It can show us a pattern we could not see before. It can also help us think better. (hopefully)

The actual problem here is this: a person solving the problem can’t explain “why it matters” to the people facing the problem. And that’s where I see the actual tension.

A label is not an answer

The professor’s answer can be technically correct within his academic world. He belongs to a particular research tradition. And his paper was rigorous by the standards of that tradition.

All good.

But when a practitioner asks: “How is this relevant?”

Merely saying: “I belong to this school of research” does not answer the question.

It actually avoids the question.

The practitioner did not ask for professor’s academic identity. He asked for the practical purpose of the work i.e., What decision does this help with? What trade-off does it clarify? What mistake does it prevent? What should a company, recycler, city planner, or sustainability manager do differently after listening to this model?

These are all fair questions in a sustainability conference meant to add value to practice.

The predictable academic defence

After I shared this story on LinkedIn, two professors pushed back. I’m glad they did, because their comments reveal the exact tension I’m trying to explain.

One professor said it would be surprising for a senior sustainability professional at a top company to not understand optimization modeling. The point was roughly this: If he doesn’t understand optimization, that means his company keeps sustainability folks away from real operational decisions. So he should go talk to people inside his own company.

(I have worked with Heads of divisions and VPs at BP, FedEx, Royal Mail. I haven’t seen a real need for them to understand how optimization models work.)

Another professor made a different argument.

He said teaching and research should not simply accept what happens in the real world. In the real world, people may drive without helmets, tell lies, run away from accident sites, or break rules. Does that mean we should teach young minds to do the same?

His point was that ideal models help us imagine a better world. Just as we teach children not to lie, cheat, bribe, or break rules, research can work with ideal assumptions and show us what we should aspire towards.

Both comments are useful. But both also show a familiar reflex. When a practitioner asks for relevance, the response becomes a defence of academia.

He didn’t know enough.
He should talk to people in his company.
He is too attached to messy reality.

This is exactly the pattern that I’m worried about.

The practitioner was not asking for less rigor

It is important to understand this. Practitioner was not saying stop doing math or forget ideal models. The question was: “Can you explain why this matters?”

A practitioner not understanding a math model does not automatically mean the practitioner is ignorant.

It can also mean the following:

• professor has not translated the work well

• assumptions were not connected back to practice.

• result was mathematically correct but operationally unclear.

• conference promised relevance but delivered academic signalling.

• bridge between rigor and relevance was missing.

And if that bridge is missing, blaming the person standing on the other side does not help.

Ideal worlds still need bridges

I liked the comment about ideal worlds. Research should not blindly copy what happens in practice. I agree.

If the real world is corrupt, unsafe, inefficient, or unjust, we should not simply say: “This is reality. Let’s just accept it.”

Teaching and research should help us imagine better systems. But here’s the catch.

An ideal world does not become useful merely because it is ideal. It becomes useful when people can see a path from the messy present → that better world. Otherwise, the model remains equivalent to a beautiful sand castle crafted by kids on the beach.

Suppose I say: “In an ideal world, all e-waste should move through perfectly traceable, safe, authorized channels.”

Wonderful.

But if I don’t understand how informal collectors, small aggregators, repair shops, local traders, price fluctuations, cash flows, household behaviour, and corporate disposal practices actually work, my ideal model may remain irrelevant. My ideal model can produce a bad policy.

So yes, we need ideal worlds. But we also need those bridges made of fieldwork, conversations with real people, observations of messy reality. Without that, “ideal world” can quickly become “detached world”.

Rigor and relevance are not enemies

Rigor and relevance are often presented as opposites. As if academics must choose between them: rigorous and mathematical; or practical and messy.

I don’t buy that. Neither should you. The best research can do both.

Rigor does not mean mathematics and statistics. That’s a poor incomplete understanding of what rigor actually means. Rigor disciplines our thinking. That can be through text, visuals, or equations. And relevance means speaking to the world outside journals.

The actual problem is that rigorous (and mindless) math models cannot answer: “So what?” and using the name of a school as a shield when someone asks a fair, uncomfortable question is not ideal.

What the professor should have said?

That professor could have answered differently.

Something like: “Yeah, that’s a fair question. This model does not capture every field reality. What it tries to do is isolate one specific collaboration problem in industrial symbiosis. The result may help companies understand when collaboration becomes stable and when it breaks down. But you’re right that the next step is to test this with real companies. Would you be interested to contribute your knowledge based on your deep experience?”

That answer would have respected the practitioner. And it would have opened a bridge that can connect the model with real world.

Instead, the room received a label i.e., name of a school: Chicago school, Carnegie school. And then dead silence.

Why I’m sharing this

I’m sharing this not to mock the professor or glorify the practitioner. I’m sharing it because many of us sit on both sides of this tension.

We create models, frameworks, dashboards, reports, policies, and presentations that make perfect sense inside our own world. But the moment someone from the other side asks, “What’s the point?”, we feel attacked.

This tension exists not only in universities. It exists in companies too.

Data teams build dashboards nobody uses. Sustainability teams write reports that operations teams ignore. Product teams build features users never asked for. Managers deliver fantastic deeply researched presentations and executive leadership questions their relevance. (I’ve seen all instances of these in my day job in the corporate world.)

In every world, there is a version of the same question: What’s the point?

And the mature response is to build a bridge rather than defending ourselves. It is tough in the beginning. But over time, we can practice building such bridges. See, I’m not an expert at this either. I’ve begun to build such bridges and learning a lot in that process.

We all know sustainability is not a clean textbook problem. It is not only about emissions, optimization, circular flows, or resource efficiency. It is also about politics, incentives, habits, power, and deeply embedded local cultures and history of economies.

A model can help. But it can’t connect many things holistically.

In such conferences, practitioners are not decorative audience members. They carry lived knowledge and know where implementation breaks.

They know what companies say publicly and do privately. Yes, the actual story behind those numbers that academics use for rigorous statistical models.

When such people ask, “What’s the point?”, we should not hear it as an insult. We should hear it as valuable data that can help move research forward.

You decide

All schools have their place: mathematical models, empirical research, fieldwork, theory.

But in a conference meant to connect sustainability research and practice, I think this is one question that should never be dismissed: “What’s the point of this work for the people who are supposed to use it?”

That question can bruise an ego. But it can also make the work better.

Have you seen this tension between rigor and relevance in your world? When someone asks “What’s the point?”, do we treat it as a threat or as an invitation?

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being here.

(you may click on voiceover to listen. experimenting with my audio.)

Today’s issue begins with a sentence I have never forgotten.

“Even God will not forgive us, if we do that.”

That’s what one e-waste recycler told me during my fieldwork.

I had asked him this harmless question: Why don’t you report your smaller competitors, operating illegally, to the government?

If he reported them, their businesses could suffer. And his own business could grow.

In a conventional business school sense, that would make sense. Remove weaker competitors → increase your market share → capture more business. That’s how that thinking goes.

But his answer to my question was nothing about this. It was that one sentence about God. There was some deep energy in his answer. I really don’t know how to explain that.

I kept seeing this again and again in India’s e-waste recycling world.

Competitive rivalry exists, of course. But many times, it takes a backseat. What comes first is a sense of relationships and community.

This is not how competition is taught

In business schools, we are taught to think about competition, competitiveness, rivalry, bargaining power, market share, and profit maximization. All super useful concepts.

But when you enter India’s informal recycling markets, and even some formal recycling businesses with roots in the informal sector, you begin to see a different grammar of business. It is like the Wren & Martin’s English grammar book burning in flames. Sorry, just being a bit dramatic.

See, it’s not that these people don’t care about money. They absolutely do care as the margins are thin, working capital is often tight, and one wrong e-waste purchase can wipe their cashflow.

The point is they don’t pursue profit by destroying their neighbor. They pursue profit by keeping the neighborhood alive. Now, that’s a very different way of doing business.

When one recycler could not buy, he called others

Let me give you an example.

A recycler once came across a large batch of e-waste from a company. He wanted to buy it. But he did not have enough money.

(Note: This in itself can surprise people from other contexts. Here, recyclers often “buy” e-waste from companies. The company conducts an auction and the highest bidder gets the material.)

Coming back to the example. So this recycler had an opportunity. But not enough cash.

He could have walked away. Instead, he called his peers. Other small recyclers from the same neighborhood came together. Each person contributed a small amount. Together, they bought the e-waste. Then they processed it and shared the profits based on each person’s contribution.

In a traditional business textbook, this may look inefficient. In real life, it was beautiful. One person’s limitation became a collective opportunity.

Cooperation behind the auction

I have also seen another pattern.

Two recyclers may be bidding for the same e-waste auction. From the outside, they look like competitors. But behind the scenes, they may coordinate. They decide who should win.

Why?

To keep the material within the community. This helps to avoid bidding wars that push prices too high. This makes sure that future profits stay among people who know each other.

Again, I’m not saying this is how every auction works.

I’m saying this kind of relationship driven business behavior is common enough to deserve serious attention.

Because if you only look through the lens of “competition,” you will miss what is actually happening.

The formal sector often doesn’t understand this

The more modern formal sector recyclers are often baffled when they see this.

Yes, I have actually seen jaws drop in industry meetings. They don’t like what they see.

To them, all this looks unprofessional. Maybe even anti-competitive. Or informal. Or backward.

But I think what’s happening is deeply beautiful.

These recyclers are not operating outside business logic. They are operating with a different business logic.

Something like a social logic, based on deep value system.

Helping your neighbor survive is not separate from your own business. It is part of your business. Because tomorrow you may need that neighbor again.

I’m not romanticizing informality

Before you roast me, let me be clear.

I’m not saying every informal practice is good or regulations don’t matter. I’m not defending illegal operations. Environmental safety, worker safety, traceability, and accountability… all matters.

But if we reduce these markets to only one story — illegal, inefficient, unorganised, backward — that story is incomplete and we miss to see the good things inside them.

We miss to see the trust, reciprocity, shared risk. We miss to see the community infrastructure that keeps materials moving even when formal systems struggle.

And most importantly, we miss the moral world in which these businesses operate.

That recycler did not say:

“Reporting them is bad for market efficiency.”

He said:

“Even God will not forgive us.”

That is not a business school sentence. But it is one of the most powerful business lessons I have heard.

Closing

The world talks a lotttt about circular economy.

But circularity is not only about materials moving in loops.

Circularity is also about relationships, trust, sense of community. Bringing more humanity inside the cut-throat business world.

P.S. How do you feel? Is this cooperation a strength of India’s recycling markets? Or does it create more problems?

P.P.S Need help in navigating this complex market? Reply and we can discuss.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Today’s issue begins with a coconut.

Yes, coconut.

A LinkedIn post I came across recently launched a fun competition. To find the most useless and unsustainable product out there.

The author nominated this “coconut drink.”

The coconut was from Vietnam. Natural outer covering was removed, wrapped in plastic. There was a hole, a plastic straw, and a plastic lid.

The rationale for nomination: nature already gave the coconut its own packaging… then humans removed it and added plastic.

Many joined the conversation with similar examples.

Bananas wrapped in plastic. English cucumbers wrapped in plastic. Individual fruits packaged like luxury electronics.

We have all seen this. And it is easy to mock or to experience anguish.

I’ve experienced this myself long ago, when I first started studying these things. So I don’t blame anyone for reacting this way.

Also, I grew up in the land of coconuts — Kerala. There were two coconut trees at my home. For a good 20 years of my life, I drank coconut water from those trees. So yes, anything about coconuts does touch my little heart :)

Also, also, in Malayalam, my native language, “what coconut!” is common slang. Meaning: “what the heck!”

And that was my first reaction too, when I saw a plastic-wrapped coconut.

What coconut! (Malayalam transl. എന്ത് തേങ്ങയാണിത്?)

But then I took a step back. Something was missing in these social media discussions.

For Vietnamese young coconuts imported by the US, the outer green skin must be removed and most of the husk trimmed away. Plastic preserves the coconut.

I’m not defending plastic or saying packaging is great. All I’m saying is we need to slow down our reactions, our outrage.

Because what looks stupid at the product level is actually a symptom of a much larger system. For instance, replace this coconut with critical rare minerals and you are holding a smartphone. It gets super interesting, no?

Let me explain.

Why was the coconut wrapped?

A coconut travelling across continents is part of a global supply chain.

Once the coconut is peeled, trimmed, transported, stored, displayed, and sold far away from where it grew, it needs protection.

Plastic becomes that ugly solution. The same logic applies to bananas and cucumbers too.

Packaging reduces damage, extends shelf life, prevents food waste. And food waste is not environmentally innocent either.

If a coconut or a banana spoils before someone eats it, the water, fertilizer, labour, transport, land, and energy used to grow and move them are also wasted.

So “why is this wrapped in plastic?” is a simple and lazy question.

A harder question is “what system made this plastic necessary?”

Now replace the coconut with a smartphone

Hold your smartphone. It has travelled through a far more complex supply chain than that coconut.

Critical minerals mined somewhere. Components manufactured somewhere else. Assembly in another country. Packaging, shipping, warehousing, retail… you get my drift.

Just like we see the plastic-wrapped coconut, we could also see the plastic-wrapped critical minerals.

I know it’s a bizarre analogy. But to show the deeper system that lies hidden, I really need to do this.

Easy outrage vs hard questions

Environmental outrage is easy when the object looks visibly absurd. Coconut, banana, cucumber… all in plastic. But the real challenge is to understand trade-offs underneath this absurdity.

• Plastic creates waste. But lack of packaging creates food waste.

• Local consumption reduces packaging. But global demand creates supply chains.

• Nature’s packaging works near the farm. But not across oceans.

Again, I’m not defending unchecked plastic use. Ocean pollution, marine life suffocation, and microplastics entering human bodies are real problems. But simply calling plastic bad does not explain why global supply chains keep depending on it.

My point is that we need to sharpen our environmental thinking i.e., moving from “this is bad packaging” → “why does the system produce such outcomes?”

Because the same bizarre coconut→smartphone logic applies to all kinds of products.

Plastic-wrapped coconut is a mirror showing how global consumption works. We want tropical products and freshness in distant supermarkets. We want smartphones made from minerals we never see. We want green stuffs without thinking about extraction.

That coconut drink is just the visible tip of the iceberg.

Over to you

How do you feel? When you see a product that looks obviously unsustainable, do you pause to ask what system created it?

Let me know. Love to learn from your examples.

And if this made you think a little differently about coconuts, bananas, smartphones, or plastic, feel free to share it with someone in your network.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective.

Today’s issue is longer than usual.

Over the last few weeks, a story has been floating around mainstream media and social media:

“IIT Madras develops clean metal recovery technology for India’s e-waste challenge”

“IIT Madras develops indigenous pilot plant to process 100 tonnes of e-waste per year”

“IIT Madras builds a plant facility that processes 100 tonnes of e-waste per year without discharge”

Naturally, some of you started asking good questions:

• Can we install this facility at common recycling centres in cities?

• How can a recycler study the process for its commercial viability?

• Can I take my circuit boards to BHEL Trichy and use this pilot plant?

So I went down a rabbit hole. I read the original research papers, IIT Madras’ annual reports, patent records, technology licensing material, and an article published by the Indian Institute of Metals.

Here is what I found.

The media story goes like this:

IIT Madras developed an indigenous technology to recover metals from e-waste. A pilot plant has been set up at BHEL Trichy. It can process 100 tonnes of e-waste per year. And the process has zero discharge.

Sounds beautiful. A pilot plant is ready, put your e-waste in, and take the metals out.

But…

The public evidence does not yet allow me to tell a recycler that the story is that simple.

What I can safely say is this:

IIT Madras developed and patented a process that was demonstrated in the lab on small quantities (100-150 grams) of printed circuit boards to recover copper, lead, and tin compounds.

The work has since moved towards a larger demonstration facility at BHEL Trichy.

But between 100–150 grams in the original lab study and the widely reported 100 tonnes per year, there are some important gaps and confusing signals.

I’m explaining all of them below.

1. It began with a few grams of circuit boards

In 2021, a PhD researcher and professors at IIT Madras published a paper: “Sequential recovery of metals from waste printed circuit boards using a zero-discharge hydrometallurgical process.”

The feedstock was cut printed circuit boards from discarded televisions. Electronic components were still attached. The cut PCBs weighed around 100–150 grams.

Using nitric acid at different concentrations, the researchers recovered:

• tin as tin oxide

• lead as lead nitrate

• copper as copper nitrate

Reported recovery efficiencies ranged from 77–97% for tin, 51–85% for lead, and 100% for copper.

This was a lab study. An interesting and relevant one, indeed.

But please notice the scale: 100–150 grams. Keep that number in mind. We will come back to it.

2. Don’t take “zero discharge” literally

The term zero discharge sounds magical. As if nothing leaves the process, no environmental impact, clean recycling. That is not what it means.

In this process, unreacted acid and gases are captured, recycled, and fed back into the system. So the idea is to minimize or prevent those acids and gases from being discharged into the environment. That is why the researchers describe it as a zero discharge process.

This process is important because… this was the chemistry that was patented and later taken towards demonstration (pilot) at BHEL Trichy.

(At least, that is what the public trail of IIT Madras’ documents, patent, published research, and the Indian Institute of Metals’ article says.)

3. Then came the patent and ₹3 crore public funding

The patent story began even before the 2021 paper was published. Patent filing started in 2018. In 2024, the Indian Patent Office granted a patent for: “Sequential Extraction of Metals from Printed Circuit Boards by Hydrometallurgical Route Using the Same Acid.”

Patent number: 534454. (You can search in IP India).

The original laboratory research acknowledges an exploratory research grant from IIT Madras. I don't know the exact amount.

But public records point to two larger projects connected to taking the idea beyond the laboratory.

IIT Madras’ annual reports in 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021 refers to:

“Establishment of a bench scale demonstration plant to process typical e-waste and recover valuable metals through a green hydrometallurgical route”

The agency listed is BHEL. Project value: ₹37.16 lakh.

IIT Madras’ annual reports in 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and project completion record refers to another project, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST):

“Setting up a zero discharge pilot plant to process 100 kg of PCB to recover lead, tin and copper”

Funding: ₹308.70 lakh.

So, public records point to roughly ₹3.45 crore across these two related projects.

Public money helped move this technology from laboratory research towards larger-scale demonstration. Which is good! This is exactly what public research funding should help do.

But now we reach the confusing part.

4. Is this really a pilot?

The IIT Madras Technology Transfer Office says:

“A pilot plant to process 100 tonnes per annum of waste is set up at BHEL Trichy.”

The same licensing document lists the Technology Readiness Level as:

TRL-4, Proof of Concept ready & validated.

I found this confusing.

Technology Readiness Levels have specific meanings.

TRL-4 generally indicates that a technology has been validated in a laboratory environment.

That is not normally how one describes a technology that has already been fully demonstrated at meaningful pilot scale.

So we have an interesting tension: “Pilot plant processing 100 tonnes per annum” vs “TRL-4, proof of concept validated.” Both appear in IIT Madras' own document.

Annual reports add another layer of tension.

One project is described as a “bench scale demonstration plant”. Another is described as a “pilot plant”. (refer section 3, above)

The principal investigator was also on sabbatical between October 2020 and October 2021 specifically:

“To set up a pilot plant to process e-waste in BHEL Trichy (DST grant project)”

So what exactly exists at BHEL Trichy? Is it a bench-scale demonstration plant? A pilot plant? A proof-of-concept facility? Were these different stages of the same project? These are open questions.

From the public information available, the technology readiness story is not as clean as the media headlines suggest.

If I am a recycling business owner being asked to invest significant money to license this technology, I will ask questions… lots of questions.

5. Now comes the 100-tonne puzzle

Another research paper discusses scaling the recovery of tin, lead, and copper. But the process in that paper is not identical to the original 2021 lab process that got patented.

The feedstock was also prepared differently in the scale-up paper. Printed circuit boards from televisions and computer motherboards were used. Electronic components were removed. The boards were cut into pieces and crushed. And the crushed PCB material used in the experiment weighed 1,600 grams.

Again, notice the number: 1.6 kg.

The researchers then used experimental findings to develop engineering calculations for a larger quantity (100 kg). This is normal research practice. You run experiments at a smaller scale. You obtain process parameters. Then you create a design basis for a larger system.

But a calculation scaled to 100 kg is not, by itself, proof that 100 kg of PCBs were physically processed successfully in a demonstration plant.

This distinction is super important.

So where did “100 tonnes per year” come from?

The June 2025 magazine of the Indian Institute of Metals says:

“Proof of concept has been established to process 10 kg of PCBs per batch in IITM and a demonstration plant to process 100 tonnes per annum has been established in BHEL Trichy”

It also names the integrating contractor as Hamsa Environmental and Engineering Solutions and the automation partner as Mayura Automation and Robotic Systems.

Hamsa’s own website describes the project as:

“Setting Up Zero-Discharge Pilot To Process 300 Kg per Day Of PCB To Recover Lead; Tin And Copper”

Then, in the same Indian Institute of Metals article, a figure caption refers to:

“100 Kg PCB Recycling Plant at BHEL Trichy”

Confused? I was too.

We now have these different numbers:

• 10 kg per batch

• 100 kg

• 300 kg per day

• 100 tonnes per year

The strongest institutional evidence I found is this: IIT Madras’ annual reports confirm a DST-funded project to set up a pilot plant to process 100 kg of PCB.

The IIT Madras Technology Transfer Office says a plant capable of processing 100 tonnes per annum has been set up at BHEL Trichy.

So one plausible interpretation is:

• 100 kg per batch = plant design basis, not proof by itself that 100 kg was actually processed in the lab or pilot plant.

• 300 kg per day = perhaps three batches per day.

• 100 tonnes per year = annualized throughput claim, approximately 300 kg per day × 333 operating days. A plant can be designed for 100 kg per batch and still be described as 100 tonnes per year on an annual basis.

Mathematically, the numbers can fit. But this still leaves one important question unanswered.

How much PCB material was actually processed at BHEL Trichy and what were the results?

I could not find publicly available pilot demonstration results answering that question.

What I can confidently trace through the published research is:

• 100–150 grams of cut PCBs in the original lab study

• 1,600 grams of crushed PCBs in the scale-up research (different process)

• engineering calculations developed for 100 kg PCBs

The claim that the facility is “designed” for 100 kg or 100 tonnes per annum is supported by IIT Madras records.

But I could not find public evidence showing the actual operating results from repeatedly processing 100 kg batches at BHEL Trichy.

Perhaps that evidence exists privately. Perhaps I have missed a document. I am happy to be corrected.

But if you are considering this technology commercially, this is one of the first questions I would ask IIT Madras.

6. What does this mean for a recycler or investor?

Suppose you have 1 tonne of printed circuit boards today. Can you load them onto a truck, drive to BHEL Trichy, process them, and collect the recovered copper, tin, and lead compounds?

No, you can’t.

This pilot plant does not yet look like a public “bring your PCBs here for processing” facility. In fact, BHEL Trichy has separately auctioned and disposed of its own e-waste to other registered e-waste recyclers.

So what are your options?

Path 1: License the technology

This is the clearest pathway. The technology is patented in India and IIT Madras explicitly advertises it as available for licensing.

A recycler interested in the process can approach the IIT Madras Technology Transfer Office.

But before signing anything, ask for the pilot plant data.

• What quantities were physically processed?

• How many batches?

• What was the recovery efficiency at that scale?

• What were the acid consumption and energy requirements?

• What were the operating problems?

• What is the expected capex and opex?

In essence, ask what happened when the technology left the lab at Madras and met the real plant at Trichy.

Path 2: Build or retrofit your own facility

A recycler could license the patented process and then build or retrofit a registered recycling facility around it.

This is where commercial feasibility becomes important. A laboratory process can work beautifully. But a recycling business has to worry about inconsistent PCB feedstock, labour, acid handling, equipment maintenance, pollution compliance, energy, throughput, downtime, recovered product quality, market prices.

In essence, can I run this process repeatedly and make economic sense?

Path 3: Ask for a joint trial

Personally, I would recommend this path.

A recycler could approach IIT Madras and ask whether a trial, demonstration, or joint pilot at BHEL Trichy is possible.

Take a representative batch of your own PCB feedstock and run it through the process. Observe what happens. Measure recovery and understand operating difficulties.

Only then evaluate licensing.

Of course, IIT Madras would need to agree for this trial. This would probably be a bespoke arrangement.

But before making a significant technology investment, I would want to see the process work on my waste. Because your PCBs will be very different from discarded television boards used in an academic lab experiment.

Closing: So, what has IIT Madras actually achieved?

Let me end by emphasizing the core point. The IIT Madras work is important. I am not dismissing it. What the public evidence tells me is that:

• The chemistry has been demonstrated in the lab.

• The process has been patented.

• Significant public funding has gone into translating the laboratory work towards larger-scale equipment and demonstration.

• A demonstration/pilot facility has been established at BHEL Trichy.

• That means the process has been de-risked somewhat.

But it does not yet mean:

There is now a commercial 100-tonne-per-year facility in Trichy where recyclers can drop off PCBs and recover metals.

And it does not mean:

The pilot plant has publicly demonstrated technical and commercial viability at 100 tonnes per year or 100 kg per batch.

Those are different claims. The media story collapsed all these stages into one beautiful headline. Reality, as always, is messier.

For a recycling business owner, the next step is not to celebrate or dismiss the technology.

The next step is to ask better questions: What was actually processed? At what scale? For how long? With what recovery efficiency? At what cost? And can I test it using my own feedstock?

That is where the real story begins.

P.S. Feel free to share this with someone in your professional network who is following the IIT Madras e-waste pilot story. And if you need personalized help navigating the research papers, patents, technology readiness, and commercial questions, reply to this email.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective.

Today’s issue is practical.

Let’s say you are setting up an e-waste recycling plant.

You already have the building. You have the PCB crusher, dismantling tables, wire strippers, tools, workers, storage space.

Now comes the next big question: How should you design the factory layout?

This is where many people fall into a trap.

They copy the assembly line.

It sounds logical, looks professional, and gives the feeling of order.

But in e-waste recycling, this often fails.

Why?

Because e-waste is not like traditional manufacturing.

The assembly line problem

In a normal factory, you know what comes in.

Raw material enters. Follows a standard process. A predictable product comes out.

But e-waste does not behave like that.

One day, you receive smartphones. Next day, servers. Some days, nothing arrives. Then suddenly, laptops and desktops come in bulk.

The input is irregular. The process is non-standard. The output is uncertain.

So if you design the plant like a rigid assembly line, the layout will look beautiful on paper.

But on the shop floor…

Machines will sit idle. Workers will wait. Material will pile up in the wrong places.
And your workflow will break.

1. Input is unpredictable

E-waste does not arrive in neat batches.

You may get: smartphones, laptops, desktops, servers, printers, cables, mixed scrap.

Each product has a different value. Each needs a different handling method.

Some items are worth repairing. Some are worth dismantling. Some are useful only for parts. Some are almost worthless.

This makes planning difficult.

And this is exactly why layout design matters.

2. Process is flexible, not standard

Dismantling a mobile phone is very different from dismantling a server. Requires different skill, tools, time, and effort.

Sometimes workers need to repair. Sometimes they need to dismantle. Sometimes they need to sort. Sometimes they need to test.

A rigid workflow cannot handle this variety.

So the plant should not be designed as if every item will follow the same path.

It won’t.

3. Output is uncertain

In e-waste recycling, you don’t always know what you will recover.

You may get: reusable products, working components, RAM, SSDs, hard drives, metals, plastics, wires or sometimes nothing valuable at all.

Estimations can go wrong.

Some parts cannot be reused. Some materials do not fetch the expected price. Some products consume more time than they are worth.

So the layout should allow quick decisions:

Repair?
Dismantle?
Store?
Sell as-is?
Send to downstream recycler?

4. Costs and revenues keep changing

Buying e-waste is tricky.

Valuation is hard.

The purchase price is not consistent. The resale value is not consistent either.

Sales of recovered materials depend on:

• London Metal Exchange prices

• local scrap market rates

• demand from refurbishers

• buyer relationships

• timing

So your factory layout must support flexibility. Not just efficiency.

There is a difference.

So, how should the layout be designed?

Instead of a rigid assembly line, think of the plant as a flexible workshop.

Your layout should be:

Modular
So different types of products can be handled in small batches.

Adaptable
So workers can shift between dismantling, testing, sorting, and storage.

Reconfigurable
So the workflow can change depending on what material arrives.

Decision-friendly
So products can be quickly routed based on value: repair, reuse, dismantle, recover, or sell.

This is not the world of mass manufacturing.

This is closer to a Formula 1 pit stop.

Or a cycle repair shop.

You don’t set up an assembly line to fix an F1 car.

You bring in the right specialists, tools, judgment, and a flexible workflow.

That’s how e-waste recycling works too.

The operations management lens

There is a useful concept in operations management called the Product-Process Matrix:

• When product variety is high and volumes are unpredictable, you need flexible processes.

• When product variety is low and volumes are high, assembly lines make sense.

E-waste recycling falls in the first category.

High variety.
Uncertain volume.
Variable value.
Messy inputs.

So copying an assembly line may make the factory look efficient.

But it may actually make the business weaker.

Final thought

Factory layout is not just about placing machines.

It is about understanding the nature of the business.

And e-waste recycling is not a clean, predictable, linear business.

It is messy, variable, judgment-heavy, market-sensitive.

So the best layout is not the one that looks most modern.

It is the one that helps the recycler respond quickly to whatever comes through the gate.

P.S. If you are setting up an e-waste recycling plant, how you are thinking about layout. Are you designing for efficiency? Or for flexibility?

Hit reply and let me know.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Great to have you here.

And a hearty welcome to the new members.

Disclaimer: this may not be a comfortable read.

A stupid idea I once had

June 5 was World Environment Day. I did not write anything online about the environment or its special day.

But it reminded me of a conversation I once had with a monk.

By monk, I mean my professor.

I was telling him about a stupid idea: “What if governments created policies to limit the production of electronic products? Fewer products, less waste, no need for recycling, environment protected.”

The monk replied: “Well said! In that case, all of us need to go to the forests and start living in caves.”

It has been more than a decade. But this conversation is still fresh in my mind.

Because what does environmentalism really mean?

To understand that, we need to first appreciate what it is not.

So let’s raise a toast.

A toast to environment-alism

To the Kindle user who claims save trees.

To the cigarette smoker who complains about the environmental effects of bad recycling.

To the conference-goer who fly in, sip bottled water (and beer) to discuss climate.

To the surgeon who wants to ban plastics.
(Surgeries rely heavily on sterile, single-use plastics.)

To the sustainability professor who buys a new electric car every few years.

To the policymaker who blindly copies policies from the West.

To the clean energy companies building solar panels and wind turbines that get landfilled when their life ends.

To the startup founder building green tech on top of cloud services powered by fossil fuels.

To me.

To you.

To all of us.

Long live environment-alism.

The uncomfortable part

Environmental concern is real and I do appreciate that. But it is shaped by privilege and often blind to ground realities.

Most of us don’t even realize we’re part of it.

We’re too innocent, well-intentioned, and comfortable.

This line of thinking is inspired by the concept of “bourgeois environmentalism”, a form of elite environmentalism popularized by the academic Amita Baviskar.

In simple words: We care about the environment. But often from a place of comfort.

If we start looking too closely, we may even end up questioning the very existence of humans on Earth.

The grand disconnect

We talk about sustainability, circular economy, net zero, and all those useful terms. But deep down, we know something is broken.

Modern society is disconnected from nature. Modern governments too.

The philosopher named Bruno Latour says this disconnect beautifully:

A strange kind of hope

Wait. There is hope.

Even if we do nothing, Earth will rebuild itself.

Most likely, if we do nothing serious, there will be a mass extinction event. Many life forms may disappear. We may disappear too.

Our dear Earth has seen such things before. Five major mass extinction events have already happened in its four-billion-year history.

Large portions of life were wiped out and life returned. Different forms of life.

David Attenborough warns in A Life on Our Planet that a sixth mass extinction is already underway.

The documentary ends on an optimistic note. Because it has to.

But the core message is clear: Earth has rebuilt itself before. And Earth will rebuild itself again.

Just that we may not be around, in our physical bodies, to watch it happen.

So what’s the moral of this story?

I don’t have a perfect answer. But one thing feels certain.

If we truly love the environment, we can stop saying that we are here to “save” it.

See, our Earth knows what to do when things go wrong. It has done this before. We are not its saviours.

What we are really trying to save is not Earth. We are trying to save the version of Earth that can still hold us, feed us, shelter us, and tolerate our human dramas.

It is strangely liberating and humbling to realize that we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Whether we reduce carbon or not. Whether we are settled in our careers or not. Whether we own a house or not. Whether we have kids to carry forward the family name or not.

They matter deeply to us in the small circles we have created around ourselves.

But in the grand story of Earth, none of this really matters.

This can feel painful to accept. Almost insulting. But it is also a hard pill worth swallowing.

Because once we accept our smallness, we will feel less anxious, less self-important, and more peaceful.

Now, you’re thinking: “Nothing matters, so why bother?”

I’m not saying we should do nothing. I’m saying we should become less arrogant about what our doing means.

Environment-alism should not begin with the fantasy that we can save Earth, but with the humility that we are the ones requesting to remain here.

Earth doesn’t need us. We need Earth.

This realization can make us more humble, less preachy, less heroic… and be more honest to ourselves when we claim to do things that save our dear environment.

P.S. How do you feel about this version of environment-alism? If it made you uncomfortable, pause, or smile, feel free to share it with a friend.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Today’s issue may seem funny. But it is actually serious.

Helps us think about the absurdity of Extended Producer Responsibility, blindly copied everywhere.

Let me explain.

Imagine this situation: “polluter pays” principle (EPR) transplanted from physical world to digital world.

Yes, these digital platforms do impact our health and environment in significant ways. Global scale.

This would mean EPR enters social media.

(we all know these platforms)

Producers made responsible for the harmful health and environmental impacts caused by their platforms.

Who are the producers? Microsoft, Meta, Google, X (Twitter), ByteDance, Reddit, Netflix and others.

Govt. mandates these producers.

Companies to ensure "brain rot" is reduced or eliminated while we scroll. (yearly targets starting from 30% and finally 100%)

Companies to ensure plants, animals, humans, and nature ecosystem around data centers aren't impacted. Companies to ensure data centers do not run on fossil fuel energy.

As consumers, we all start the fight for justice and environmental protection.

We threaten these companies by saying: "we will quit all your platforms if you don't comply with the law of the land.”

Three cheers to Extended Producer Responsibility!

Before you dismiss this as light pun, hear me out please.

The grand old daddy of EPR - the one who invented this idea in 1990s - has confessed that EPR was a clever tool developed to manage waste in the Nordics.

“Clever” because, it did not put financial burden on govt and citizens.

As there were no secondary markets in the Nordics that reuse and repurpose things, somebody had to set up such a system. Meaning somebody had to put in the money to set up a system.

Govt didn’t want to. Because that would mean citizens pay higher tax.

Naturally, that responsibility fell on producers… the brands that make these products.

Look at how EPR is being blindly copied to countries that have thriving secondary markets (aka informal sector).

Absurdity of EPR.

P.S. If you are trying to understand e-waste recycling industry in India market, I’m happy to help. Feel free to reply.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Writing poems on-demand. Any topic.

I suggested the topic that runs in my veins. Waste.

Kit immediately started typing. 1 min. Poem ready.

Did you enjoy? What did you like the most?

Until next time,
— Krishnan

Today’s issue is about something fascinating:

How local e-waste markets absorb global shocks.

Gold prices.
RAM.
SSDs.
AI compute.
Second-hand electronics.
Informal recyclers.
Formal recyclers.

All connected.

Let’s dive in.

Your old PC may be worth more today

Two big trends are shaping e-waste valuations right now:

• Elevated gold prices

• Tight supply and high demand for RAM and SSDs

If you disposed of your old PC eight months ago vs. today, you may notice something interesting.

The money you can get for it may have gone up.

I’m talking about markets like India, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America… places where you often get paid when you dispose of e-waste.

Old PCs have richer metal content

Older PCs often contain more recoverable metals.

Especially gold.

So when gold prices remain high, the scrap value of such machines also rises.

A desktop motherboard that looked boring last year suddenly becomes more interesting.

Motherboard did not change. World around it changed.

Newer PCs have valuable reusable parts

Now look at newer machines.

They may not always be as metal-rich as older machines.

But they often contain better RAM and SSDs.

And right now, these components are in demand globally. Partly driven by AI compute, data centers, and pressure on memory supply.

That means recovered RAM and SSDs can find more buyers in second-hand electronics markets.

Buyers who are willing to pay more.

So recyclers who understand both commodity markets and reuse markets can generate better revenue. If they play smart.

Now imagine this at scale

Imagine a large company disposing of 10,000 employee laptops.

Recyclers would love that.

Why?

Because this is “high quality” e-waste.

And by high quality, I mean revenue generating at lower costs.

The way the ecosystem works is beautiful.

By ecosystem, I mean both informal and formal sectors.

Together, they ensure gold is recovered and later sold to jewellery makers, metal traders, and others.

Together, they ensure RAM and SSDs are recovered and sold into second-hand electronics markets.

Government did not create this ecosystem.

Law did not create this ecosystem.

It emerged because markets found value in what others discarded.

That is the unique feature of these economies.

The ecosystem adapts quickly

Thanks to this thriving ecosystem, local markets can quickly respond to:

• global gold prices

• component shortages

• second-hand demand

• repair needs

• resale opportunities

This is not a neat circular economy diagram.

It is messy. But it works.

Now imagine if this ecosystem did not exist.

What would happen to gold?
What would happen to RAM?
What would happen to SSDs?

Would they be recovered?
Would they be reused?
Would they sit in storage?

These are not small questions.

But can we measure all this neatly?

Now comes the inconvenient part.

These flows cannot be neatly quantified and explained through clean statistics or KPIs to please thesis supervisors or international development agencies.

If you are hell-bent on quantifying every movement, you will hit dead-end.

Of course, you can create guesstimates. With many many disclaimers.

Writer Adam Minter puts it well:

Recycling and refurbishment industry is a notoriously difficult business to turn into clean data. In part, this is due to the nature of the product. I rarely cite numbers tabulated by environmental organizations, despite their widespread use and circulation in media.

This is uncomfortable to hear.

Especially in an era obsessed with data, KPIs, dashboards, and metrics.

But anyone who has spent time in the ecosystem knows this.

A small note if you dispose of old PCs

You are doing a noble act, if you are not asking for money when you dispose of your old PCs.

You are allowing the recycler to keep a little additional margin.

And in a low-margin business, that matters a lot.

You are helping the ecosystem survive.

And in doing so, you are contributing to circular economy, SDGs, sustainability… whatever these words mean to you.

In daily life, circularity is not grand.

It can be as simple as letting the person who knows how to recover value keep enough margin to continue doing the work.

P.S. What would happen to gold, RAM, and SSDs if this ecosystem did not exist?

P.P.S. If you are overwhelmed with this complex ecosystem, I’m happy to help. Feel free to reply.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective.

If you want to understand how countries build tech capability, look beyond R&D labs. Study scrap disposal.

1.

I recently spoke with a professional who spent two decades in Singapore’s semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem.

He shared this amazing story.

USA leads the world in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Not chips, but the machines that make chips.

Semiconductor fabs in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines buy this equipment.

After years of use, the equipment is decommissioned and sold as scrap.
(part of e-waste)

Scrap traders buy and resell it as part of routine business.

Super interesting part comes after this.

2.

Through global scrap trading networks, used semiconductor equipment and components can end up in places that cannot directly purchase such technology from USA.

Scrap traders often doesn’t know the national value of what they’re dealing with. They’re only responding to price signals. Doing their business.

Once acquired, these machines and components can be:
- Studied
- Dismantled
- Reverse-engineered
- Reused in entirely different systems: civilian or military

Reuters reporting on scrap laundering through N. Korea to China, shows scrap flows can be complex and surprising.

This is one of the lesser-discussed ways countries build technological capability outside formal channels. Through secondary markets of scrap.

3.

This logic is not new.

It is the same structural logic behind recent headlines like: “DeepSeek gets high-end GPUs via Singapore.” (DeepSeek AI was made in China)

U.S. Department of Energy announced $100M funding to support projects “that demonstrate the commercial viability of recovering and refining rare earth elements from unconventional feedstocks including mine tailings, e-waste, and other waste materials.”

Was the motivation purely to protect environment or our dear planet?

No.

It was to “reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources, strengthen national security, and promote American energy independence”.

In this case, circular economy is an unintended outcome.

4.

The bigger point to understand: Circular economy is not only about environment or planet protection.

It intersects with a nation’s:

• Security

• Technological authority

• Independence

Which is why the dynamics of scrap markets often tell us more about a country’s real capabilities than official trade statistics ever will.

As you have probably noticed, this article is not about blame. It is about understanding how systems actually work.

P.S. If you’re trying to study this complex industry, I’m happy to help. Feel free to reply to this email.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective.

Today’s issue is slightly different.

This comes from my professional experience working with an e-waste recycling startup and partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

I built an AI roadmap for the startup.

A few months later, the founder told me: “Every investor we are speaking to wants to lay their hands on it.”

That roadmap played a role in helping them secure VC funding.

Why I’m sharing this

Over the years, I’ve worked in an AI research lab, built cloud partnerships (Amazon, Google), and helped grow enterprise AI solutions.

Not saying this to brag. But to show I’ve seen both sides:

• how AI actually gets built

• and how businesses try (and often struggle) to use it

What I’m sharing below is practical.

You can apply it directly to your own recycling business.

Step 1: Start with your domain, not AI

Don’t start with tools.
Start with your business.

• Where are you losing money?

• Where are you missing revenue opportunities?

• Where are decisions still “gut-based”?

AI should come after this clarity.

Step 2: Partner smartly

Partner with tech/IT services companies that already have alliances with:

• AWS

• Google Cloud (GCP)

• Microsoft Azure

Chances are, you’re already buying e-waste from one of these IT companies.

Use that connection.

Step 3: Build an AI Roadmap

Here’s what a simple roadmap looks like:

1. Identify key pain points

2. Map use cases where AI can save $ or generate $

3. Design high-level solutions using one cloud platform

4. Estimate effort (low / medium / high)

5. Use this to pitch investors or outsource development smartly

A hidden lever most people miss

You can often negotiate zero-cost collaborations.

In exchange, offer to co-create a public case study.

Cloud providers and tech consulting companies want success stories — especially in circular economy and sustainability.

There are even “private offers” for startups in these sectors.

This becomes a win–win–win:

• you get tech support

• they get visibility

• investors get confidence

Let me pause for a second.

Still with me? Good.

Now let’s look at where this actually shows up in your business.

Powerful AI use cases (for recyclers)

I’m not going to repeat the boring use cases you’ve probably seen before.

Using AI to detect metals, plastics, bottles…

You already know. These rarely work well in real-world operations.

Instead, let me share actionable use cases that actually create value.

You could even spin each of these into a startup.

1. Commodity Price Forecasting (Low effort, immediate value)
Your margins depend on timing.

Track metals, plastics, and other commodities.

Use market data (London Metal Exchange), commodity news signals to generate short-term trends, forecasts.

Make smarter decisions: when to buy, when to sell, at what price.

This helps you:

• avoid bad inventory decisions

• improve margins on recovered materials

2. Lead Detection (Medium effort, high upside)
Leads/opportunities don’t arrive neatly. They show up as signals.

Use local signals: news, location data, business events.

Get early alerts on: office closures, seasonal disposal cycles, bulk disposal events.

This helps you:

• spot opportunities before competitors

• stay ahead in sourcing

• strengthen your business development

3. AI-Powered Pricing (High effort, breakthrough impact)
Pricing is still largely expert-driven.

Use images of e-waste inventory, historical transaction data.

Estimate value based on brand, condition, resale potential.

This helps you:

• reduce reliance on a few experts

• standardize pricing

• scale operations more confidently

Effort vs Impact (quick view)

• Forecasting → Low effort, quick wins

• Lead detection → Medium effort, strong leverage

• AI pricing → High effort, but a game-changer

Where to start

Start small.

Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) already offer prebuilt tools. You can test initial ideas in 2–4 weeks. From there, iterate, refine, and scale.

Once direction is clear, a figure-as-you-go approach works best.

See how this worked in practice

Here’s a real case study of how I applied this approach with an e-waste recycler:

👉 [Link to case study]

This was not a large-scale AI transformation.
Just a well-thought-out roadmap, grounded in business reality.

And that was enough to:

• shape investor conversations

• build credibility

• and unlock real business value

P.S. If you’re running a recycling business (or adjacent) and thinking about using AI, I’m happy to help. Feel free to reply to this email. We can start with a conversation.

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective!

E-waste supply is irregular. Unpredictable.

Recyclers can’t plan “how much,” “when,” or “what type” of material they’ll get next month.

Many operate at <30% of their installed capacity.

They’ve told me:

“Some years we earn ₹X lakhs, some years ₹Y lakhs, and some years nothing.”

“Sometimes it’s ₹X a month. Sometimes ₹Y lakh. Then zero.”

“Every 15-30 days, no material. But salaries must be paid. Or workers leave.”

“We keep going up and down. Sometimes, we earn. Sometimes, we don’t earn. We do not have a straight level.”

Here’s how the cycle plays out. Assume you are the recycler.

You do business development, sales.

You get the attention of a company. They “sell” you e-waste.

You have fresh cash deficit in the bank.
(because you "buy" from this customer)

You also got fresh e-waste.

You put all your efforts to work on this.

So you’re busy. No new business development and sales.

The work gets done.

Now you’re back to hunting for new customers.

This could take weeks or months.

Repeat. Over and over.

(See this visual below)

So the income graph looks like the red line (volatile).

Not like the green line (steady).

This is why so many recycling businesses get stuck at the same level.

This happens to large recyclers too. Even ones with dedicated business development teams.

It’s not just a sales problem.
It’s a system problem.

P.S. What have you tried to break this cycle? What has worked for you (or companies you know)? Eager to know your experiences.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective.

Today’s note is short. It began as a playful LinkedIn post, inspired by Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics. But the idea behind it is serious.

If someone were writing a Handbook of Waste Management in the year 2076, perhaps they would begin with something like this:

The 3 Laws of Waste Management

1. A country may not injure its informal sector or, through inaction, allow the informal sector to come to harm.

2. A country must respect the informal sector’s existing ways of working, except where such ways conflict with the First Law.

3. A country must develop its own waste management methods (rather than importing them from elsewhere), as long as such methods do not conflict with the First or Second Law.

— Handbook of Waste, 1st edition, 2076 A.D.

(Inspired by Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot)

Why I wrote this

Today, the informal sector is often treated as something to be fixed, replaced, formalized, or eliminated.

But I suspect future historians will see it very differently.

They will see it as a foundational system that kept materials circulating when formal systems struggled to do so.

They will see waste pickers, scrap traders, refurbishers, repair technicians, and small recyclers not as an anomaly… but as the backbone of circular material flows.

We may only fully understand its value once it disappears.

Waste is not the same everywhere

One of the most insightful responses to this idea came from Rajat, an e-waste recycling professional.

Paraphrasing what Rajat said:

Waste is not a monolith.
It reflects how a country consumes.

In the United States, the dominant conversation is around plastic and packaging waste.

In India, the challenge looks very different.
We deal with massive volumes of organic waste.

Even the way we think about circularity differs.

India has a thriving refurbished electronics market. Devices move through repair and second-hand channels for years before reaching recyclers. In contrast, many Western systems operate with much faster product turnover.

This raises a question.

If waste systems are so context-specific, why do so many countries simply copy-paste international frameworks, UN templates, or foreign models?

As Rajat put it:

We need concrete, localized laws that respect these realities rather than simply copy-pasting foreign standards that were never designed for our context.

The deeper point

Waste management systems are deeply tied to culture, economics, labor markets, and consumption patterns.

You cannot design them purely from policy templates.

And you certainly cannot design them without understanding the systems that already exist.

That is why the informal sector matters.

All of us know that this may not be ideal.
But it is solving problems every single day at a scale formal systems can never match.

A question for you

If future historians really did write a Handbook of Waste in 2076, what do you think they would say about today’s policies?

Would they say we understood the systems that were right under our nose?

Or that our vision had blind spots that saw the system primarily through its flaws rather than its strengths?

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective.

And thanks for the great conversation a few days ago. It was great to meet some of you online.

Today, I want to share a story.

It came from an engineer with 20+ years on semiconductor fab shop floors.
He told me this over dinner.

If you manage global product take-back or Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) at an OEM, this story might make you uncomfortable.

The Engineer

He makes “chips” – semiconductor stuff.
Hands-on. Machines. Production lines.

He has worked across semiconductor manufacturing ecosystems in Singapore and the UK.

The Box in the Scrap Yard

In Singapore, there’s an industrial area called Tuas.

It has a dense cluster of scrap trading and recycling businesses.

He told me this:

“I once went to a scrapyard, picked up a box, brought it back to the factory… and made the machine work again.”

The box wasn’t “scrap” in the usual sense.

It was a controller unit. The brain of a semiconductor machine.
A Millipore robot driver box (his exact words).

Obsolete.
No longer sold.
No official spare parts available.

The company had decided to dispose it off, because:
- No storage space
- No customer demand
- Not required for next-gen chips

On paper: End of life.

In reality: That box brought a million-dollar machine back to life.

A single obsolete box in a scrapyard could decide whether a million-dollar machine lived or died.

Then He Moved to the UK

And everything changed.

He can’t do that anymore. Not because the machines are different.

Because the system is different.

Singapore Model

• Old machines from European HQ shipped to Singapore for lower-cost scrapping

• Internal teams maintain and tinker

• Salvaging parts from scrap yards is normal

• Repair culture exists

UK Model

• OEM representatives stationed on-site

• Repairs only with authorized spare parts

• Old parts removed immediately

• If spares unavailable → machine not repaired

• New machine purchased

Clean business process. Compliant.

And yet…

A lost opportunity to extend the life of equipment.
A lost opportunity for repair, reuse, improvisation.
A lost opportunity for circularity.

Same industry.
Same technology.
Very different outcomes.

P.S. If you manage product take-back or EPR programs, did this story surprise you? Or, did it challenge some clean assumptions baked into reports, audits?

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective!

Today, I want to share a short story.

It’s about “power”.
About how we “frame” the informal sector.
And at the end, I’d like to invite you to a short online conversation this Sunday (Feb 15).

A short story from the field

A group of officials from the government and international development agencies once visited waste pickers in a so-called “third-world” country.

These were workers in the informal sector — people who collect, sort, and trade waste every single day.

The officials said:

"We have come to discuss how to integrate you into the formal system."

One of the waste pickers replied calmly:

“Okay…but, it is you that is integrating into our existing system.”

Someone from the formal sector responded:

"Absolutely. How easily we have ignored their role."

That response came from a place of recognition:
- We failed to see you
- We now acknowledge your contribution
- We will include you

It was well-intentioned.
Most of us would probably respond the same way.

(Take a moment and think about the last time you were part of such a conversation.)

What were the waste pickers really saying?

Let’s read that line again.

“It is YOU that is integrating into OUR existing system.”

They weren’t saying: "Thank you for finally seeing us."

They were saying:
“This system already exists because of us.”
“You depend on what we have built.”

This was a conversation about:
- ownership
- power
- authority

And about a question we rarely pause to ask:

The wrong question we keep asking

You’ve heard this many times:

“How do we integrate the informal sector into the formal sector?”

It sounds inclusive. Even progressive.

But it is the wrong question.

Have we ever learned to “work with” the informal sector?

A conversation that stayed with me

I’m often reminded of a conversation I had with a young public policy professional from a leading university in development studies.

This is exactly what she said to me:

“Someday they have to move to the formal sector. They cannot keep polluting the environment through informal ways. Until the Government clamps down heavily on them, they can continue their informal ways.”

She had a master’s degree in development studies, had worked with UNDP, and now works in public sector consulting.

Her intentions were good.

But this way of thinking is common among well-educated professionals. Because we are not trained to frame these issues holistically.

Reframing the conversation

Instead of “taking the informal sector along,”
think “walking with the informal sector” to co-create grounded, lasting solutions.

Instead of “leading the informal sector,”
think “learning from them” to design policies rooted in lived expertise.

Instead of assuming the driver’s seat,
think “sitting in the same vehicle” and navigating with those who know the route.

Instead of “extending a helping hand,”
think “joining hands” to build a circular economy that respects local wisdom.

How we frame things determines what we see… and what we miss.

Invitation: Let’s talk

I’m hosting a 60-min online meeting this Sunday (Feb 15), from 4:00–5:00 pm IST/ 10:30-11.30 am UTC.

Please add this to your calendar.

Joining link: Google Meet

Agenda (simple and informal):

• Getting to know each other

• Light networking

• A conversation on how we can reframe discussions around the informal sector

That’s it.

Talk soon,
— Krishnan

It is about the circular self.
And the strange origin story of this newsletter.

Last week, a Zoom conversation with a community member unexpectedly made me pause and reflect.

How it actually began

In 2021, after I quit my full-time faculty role and returned to the corporate world, I had one question in my head:

How do I make a living doing what I love?
(i.e., social science research)

So I asked myself something slightly outrageous:

“What if I could make $1M? Then maybe I could simply do what I love.”

And my answer, at that time, was:

Start an academic journal.

You may disagree, argue, send counter-evidence.
But deep down, I still believe this:

The academic publishing industry is one of the most profitable and least risky businesses on the planet.

I say that after 17 years in it. As an author, reviewer, conference organizer, even someone who tried acquiring a journal.

So I imagined a journal built differently where authors actually receive royalties.

• each article sold for <$10,

• 50% to the author,

• 40% to reviewers,

• 10% to the editor & publisher (me).

Disruptive. Fair. Elegant.

Except… I never started it.

Partly because I became disillusioned with how academic publishing works.
And partly because life (i.e., bills) took priority.

A seed still grew

That abandoned idea became the seed for this newsletter.

A promise I made to myself and to the recyclers, scrap traders, and experts who gave me their time.

If people helped me understand how this industry works, I owe it to them and to others to make that understanding public.

So, in June 2023, SCRAPPED was born.

• 2.5 years in

• 34 articles

• 100+ community members spanning recycling, NGOs, academia, ESG, tech, banking, energy, commodity markets, and yes, a few close relatives.

It is still small. But deeply meaningful.

The uncomfortable part

A few of you, very generously, wrote to me in the early days asking:

“How do I become a paid subscriber?”
“Where is the button to support you?”

I said:
“No monetisation. I’m just writing.”

Years ago, in 2017, a member asked me:

“With everything you know, why aren’t you building something?”

He literally said he’d fund it.

Someone even reached out asking whether I wanted to enter the business of buying and selling newsletters.

I declined all these.

Because deep down, I was scared.

I believed I didn’t have anything valuable to offer.

Corporate work had drained most of my attention, even though I never really enjoyed climbing the “corporate ladder”.

If I really wanted a VP / CXO role, I would’ve stayed in Bangalore and climbed it. I was so close. I quit instead, relocated country to support my wife, and started from ground zero.

I share this not to brag. Many of you here have held far more senior roles than I ever will.

I share this because parts of it may mirror your own journey or even that of your adult children.

Two entrepreneurs recently asked me if I offer services

I spent 3 hours helping them anyway.

And I realized that I already have something to offer: knowledge, context, mental models, industry insight.

Maybe the most circular act I need to practice now is this. Allowing value to return to me, not just flow outward.

What’s next?

Going forward, I want to:

• help you more intentionally

• offer new ways to learn / think / apply

• create spaces for members to network with one another

• maybe experiment with capitalism without shame

Because I already “sell myself” every month in exchange for a salary.

Why not sell myself in service of what I actually love and what genuinely helps others?

That transition will be painful.
Like a toddler transitioning out of diapers during potty training.
Embarrassing. Messy. Necessary.

Thank you.

For reading.
For replying.
For existing in this space.

Let 2026 stretch our brains, soften our hearts, and renew our hopes.

Let’s continue to challenge and reframe the modern (narrow) worldview on circular economy.

P.S. I need your help. Tell me one of these. Reply with:

What direction do you want this newsletter to go next year?
or
What is your No.1 challenge right now: professionally or intellectually?

Your answer will shape what comes next.

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective!

Today, I want to introduce you to a beautiful little book authored by one of our own community members — Gitanjali.

Most of what we use today runs on software.
This newsletter platform.
Your phone.
Your car.
Everything.

We often think about the environmental footprint of physical things… steel, cement, clothes, electronics.

But what about software?
How do we measure its carbon footprint?
How should companies report it as global regulations tighten?

If you work in ESG, sustainability consulting, climate strategy, or tech, this book will sharpen your understanding and open new ways of thinking.

It’s short, beautifully illustrated, rich in nuance, and free.

Two ideas I loved:
- Acknowledging that this domain is not as straightforward as we think.
- The environmental benefits of using green software/digital tools may or may not outweigh the environmental costs of building and operating them.

These nuances are rarely acknowledged elsewhere.

By the end, you’ll appreciate why environmental sustainability in software is a “wicked problem”, hard to fully define and impossible to solve neatly.

And this is perfectly aligned with Erica’s belief (another community member) that “the world needs to hear more from people who resist easy answers.”

Here’s the book: An Illustrated Guide to Green Software Engineering

When you’re done, tell me the one detail you noticed. Smart readers like you always spot things others overlook.

And if someone in your circle appreciates this kind of thinking, share it with them too.

Until next time,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective!

This one is slightly longish.

A community member forwarded me this headline:

“High GST on scrap e-waste hurting India’s circular economy - CSE study.”

The key message: Reduce GST from 18% to 5% so recyclers can thrive.

Mainstream media covered it. Social media amplified it.

So I went back to the source — the full report published by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

After reading all 30 pages of dense text, diagrams, illustrations, and photos, here are the six core takeaways:

• Waste materials like metal scrap, plastic, e-waste, batteries are taxed at 18% GST.

• Virgin + recycled materials are taxed the same, despite their environmental differences.

• High GST pushes small dealers (mostly informal) to use cash transactions and avoid tax.

• This distorts the market and lowers overall tax revenue.

• Lower GST + formalization of informal sector = higher tax revenue for the govt.

• Therefore, the govt. should reduce GST.

That’s the essence of the report.

Good effort, but framed in the wrong direction

First, let me say this. It is good effort!

A lot of effort has gone into developing a short but comprehensive report.

It covers everything: paper, plastic, agri waste, batteries, EOL vehicles, solar panels, tyres, glass, fly ash.

And it’s good that mainstream media picked up the issue.

But I have one big concern:

The report is framed in a way that fundamentally misunderstands India’s recycling reality.

I wish the same high-powered brains had framed the core argument differently.

The “crying kid at day-care” framing

The report’s positioning can be summarised as:

18% tax is hurting us.
The informal sector is evading taxes.
You (Govt) are losing money.
Reduce tax + eliminate the informal sector → you’ll collect more revenue.

This feels like one kid complaining to the teacher at day-care:
“I’m not the naughty one. They are!”

This framing is wrong for several reasons.

Stop portraying informal sector as villains

Educate policy makers on how the recycling industry actually operates and how reducing the tax will help recyclers run profitably and in-turn contribute to SDGs.

For example, consider these talking points:

• Recycling is not manufacturing. Business dynamics are very different.

• Waste and virgin materials can’t be taxed equally. This distorts the market.

• Govt. offers several tax incentives to manufacturing sector. Why can’t this be done for recycling too?

• High tax rate destroys already-thin profit margins.

• Low margins push even formal recyclers into cash transactions, evading taxes. Not because they want to, but because they must.

A large formal recycler in Maharashtra once told me:

We don’t want to adopt corrupt practices. But if we don’t, we will shut down.

And many such recyclers in the formal sector have similar story.

These are the real issues. Not the informal sector evading taxes.

Most informal scrap dealers already have VAT registration. They are not invisible or unrecognized.

Two important points from the report, lost in the noise

Buried inside the document were two genuinely meaningful points:

• low-margin nature of recycling business (pg. 18)

• common facility centers for informal recyclers can operate safely (pg. 32)

These deserved greater attention with more details.

But the bigger framing — “informal sector = tax loss” — overshadowed them.

Why this framing is not surprising

CSE is supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Developed countries like Sweden don’t have an informal sector. They are unfamiliar with India’s structural realities.

So their mental model becomes the default lens.

Imagine me going to the UK (where I live now) and asking:

Why aren’t kabadiwalas coming to my home to buy my rubbish: paper, plastic, glass, furniture?

A Brit will find that absurd. An Indian will find it perfectly logical.

Context shapes worldview.

Enough. Back to the report.

CSE consulted the following stakeholders:

• Material Recycling Association of India (MRAI)

• Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM)

• Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)

All these groups have clear incentives and biases.

Plus, the CSE also consulted recycling companies. Not sure who. I suspect it is only the recycling companies in the formal sector.

The informal sector was not truly represented. Or their perspectives were filtered to suit the existing narrative.

Formal sector can never replace informal. It’s structurally impossible.

Read this patiently.

India’s informal sector contributes to more than 50% of the country’s GDP.

(This is not the case in Sweden, UK or other developed countries.)

It exists in:

• Recycling

• Manufacturing

• Retail

• Healthcare

• Media

• Publishing

• …pretty much everywhere

Many believe:

• Informal sector is a problem to be removed.

• It will disappear as India develops.

Both assumptions are wrong.

Here is the truth:

*** Informal sector is a feature and not a bug ***

It is deeply intertwined with the formal sector. It will not disappear. Nor should it.

This is the consensus among scholars like:

• Martha Chen (Harvard, Padma Shri)

• Barbara Harriss-White (Oxford, JNU)

• Rajalaxmi Kamath (IIM)

• R. Vaidyanathan (IIM)

• Poornima Chikarmane (SNDT)

• Mark Holmström

(Or if you prefer a shortcut: talk to me.)

Reports that ignore this economic reality are starting on the wrong foot.

So, what now?

The question is not: How do we formalize the informal sector and increase tax revenues?

The question is: How do we design systems that work with India’s actual economic structure?

This should have been the framing:

• Lower GST + basic tax incentives + ease of doing business → these are not “favors.” They’re the minimum conditions recyclers need to stay alive in one of the most complex industries in the country.

• Recyclers are not asking for anything special. They’re simply asking for the same treatment that other industries already receive—industries whose business dynamics are far less complex than recycling.

• A healthy recycling ecosystem means:

  • more material actually gets recycled,

  • fewer resources wasted,

  • and a smoother transition toward a fuller circular economy.

If the report had been framed this way, any government official reading it would probably feel a sting, maybe even a lump in the throat. They should feel emotional that the recycling sector has been ignored for so long.

Over to you

How do you feel about the CSE report? Do you agree with the way it was framed?

P.S. If you want a curated reading list on India’s informal sector and how the economy really works, reply and I’ll send you one.

Until next time,
— Krishnan

Thank you for being part of this thoughtful collective!

Today, I want to share two things: a quick community update and an under-the-radar startup idea that might spark new thoughts.

Community Update

Two wonderful members of this community recently connected and they’ve begun collaborating in the education space.

One is a domain expert in waste management, and the other is an IIM professor. Both are close to me, and I’m so happy to see them working together to advance waste management education.

Wishing them the very best! I hope it becomes a long, meaningful collaboration.

Startup Idea: Repurposing Used EV Batteries

Imagine a digital platform that gives used EV batteries (from autorickshaws, mopeds, and other small TVs) a second life — as energy storage systems.

When I was in the product team of a large energy company, I tested this idea at a concept level. I found that there’s strong appetite among investors to back startups working in this space.

Let me tell you a secret — the ventures arm of that company was actively scouting for startups, to invest in or acquire, who were building such solutions.

A recent chat with an aspiring entrepreneur from this community reminded me of this idea. So, I’m sharing it here in case it sparks something for you too.

The core concept

• EV batteries cannot be used after 70-80% capacity is utilized. The remaining capacity is useful for solar farms.

• EV owners drop off used batteries at charging stations.

• Those batteries are tested, graded, aggregated.

• Solar farms buy them at ~50% less than the cost of new batteries.

• This helps solar projects achieve better ROI and lower LCOSS (Levelized Cost of Solar + Storage). LCOSS is a key KPI in this business.

• Battery makers earn a fee when their packs are reused, encouraging them to design for repurposing from the start.

This digital marketplace will connect EV owners, charging stations, solar farms, battery manufacturers.

All win. And so does the circular economy.

Reality Check

The grain of this idea is already tested and proven. For example, E-Hands Energy has deployed repurposed EV batteries in solar microgrids in Palghar District (credit to a LinkedIn reader for sharing this!).

But large-scale commercialization is still waiting to happen.

Of course, there are challenges: grading batteries, compatibility across battery brands, etc. And these are the kind of hard problems that define great founders.

You could easily adapt this idea to your own context. Beyond solar farms, applications could include microgrids, data centers, or hospital backup systems.

If you’re an aspiring founder in circularity, maybe this sparks something.

P.S. What do you think of this startup idea? Feel free to reply to this email.

Even if you’re not exploring startups right now, drop me a note anyway. I’d love to stay connected and see how I can help.

Until next time,
— Krishnan