The Plastic-to-Ghar Project

Last updated on 21 January 2025

Background Information

The University of Cambridge and Impact Hub Kathmandu have teamed up to establish an innovation and business support ecosystem known as the Plastic-to-Ghar (P2G) Hub (‘Ghar’ means ‘home’ in Nepali). The Hub acts as an incubator for new and emerging small-scale businesses working to provide solutions that address plastics waste challenges in Nepal by transforming plastic waste into durable, long-lasting housing products.

This innovation system is locally-led and informed by local challenges. The high-altitude village homes in Nepal lack reliable plastic recycling facilities, and many people in this area live in housing without proper insulation. Many of them are still rebuilding with limited resources since after the 2015 earthquake. The challenges to improving these structures include the poor accessibility, and high cost of transporting building materials to remote and perilous locations whilst protecting the Himalayan forests and keeping it intact.

The P2G project set out to address this dual challenge by using plastic waste as feedstocks to be remanufactured as home insulation and home building products. The P2G project convenes local entrepreneurs and innovators to co-create innovative housing solutions with beneficiaries by facilitating MAKEathon sessions. Stakeholders are actively involved in the design processes to ensure that items made are responsive to their most essential needs. The P2G then incubates the most promising project ideas into start-ups under the P2G Alliance. P2G also supplies them with the required equipment for plastic upcycling and production at no-cost, resulting in the establishment of small-scale plastic upcycling production units across Nepal.

During the course of implementation, the complexity of logistics of managing plastic waste became apparent. For this reason, the team has made adjustments to the original model, and is developing a collection and mechanical recycling facility in the lower lying areas, while maintaining one existing facility in the Himalayan regions. Through project learnings, the team has come to understand that the total amount of waste generated and available to process in the mountainous region is relatively limited, while a much larger volume of plastics is being collected in the flatter regions due to its proximity to the urban areas and road systems to India.

This adjustment is therefore more commercially viable, and will enable a more practical route to tackle the plastic waste challenges, creating sizeable qualitative and quantitative impact in Nepal. The mountainous regions will benefit from waste management education and innovation capacity building for the local communities. The flat region will envisage the diversion of a substantial amount of plastic waste into useful products. In addition, the project maintains its added co-benefit of improving livelihoods and resilience to cold and a changing climate.

The primary outputs and targets of this project include:

Establishing innovation ecosystems for plastic upcycling in Nepal
Establishing distributed small-scale plastic waste hubs in Nepal for the locals, by the locals using the local plastic waste

Updates

Despite numerous unforeseeable challenges, the project entered into its fourth and penultimate phase in 2024.

In 2023, two successful MAKEathons were held with five start-ups being selected for incubation – prototyping, pilot, and seed funding. During the subsequent incubation period, the start-ups were given monthly tailor-made Master Classes to learn various business skills – design development, polymer education, health & safety, GEDSI, team building, sustainable business model development, book keeping, and pitch development.

During the first half of 2024, there were several developments pertaining to the five start-ups with two start-ups terminating their engagement with the project to pursue other opportunities and another two of the start-ups (Plastic Heart and Paramendo) deciding to merge their businesses into a single entity under the Paramendo name. This leaves two start-ups who are still engaged in the project, Paramendo and GD Labs, both of which show increasingly promising results. This has serendipitously allowed the consortium partners to better focus their efforts on supporting these businesses and ensuring their success and sustainability.

In terms of their products, both start-ups have completed their prototype designs and testing are being finalised. To ensure the performance competitiveness of the upcycled products, the mechanical property and accelerated weathering tests are being conducted at the University of Cambridge, whilst the engineering lab at Kathmandu University is designing the thermal and acoustic insulation property testing.

As of November 2024, the project, together with GD Labs, has completed a pre-feasibility study for the Super Press Hub location selection.

Knowledge Dissemination

A book draft on the grassroot plastic innovation in Nepal is complete, with the target for publishing in 2025.