Interview with Mr. Rajesh mittal, Managing Director, Green Planet Waste Management
Green Planet Waste Management Pvt. Ltd. (GPWM), established in 2010, is an Indian environmental services company specialising in waste management, recycling, and sustainable waste processing solutions. The company provides services such as plastic waste collection and recycling, organic waste composting, material recovery facility (MRF) operations, and waste-to-energy solutions. It also supports businesses in meeting Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requirements for plastic, electronic, battery, tyre, used oil, and construction and demolition waste. Through its waste processing infrastructure and environmental initiatives, GPWM promotes responsible waste disposal, resource recovery, and the reduction of landfill waste, contributing to a cleaner and more sustainable environment.
PMT : What inspired the establishment of Green Planet Waste Management in 2010?
Rajesh mittal : When we started in 2010, I had already spent years in the plastics industry and knew how little of what was thrown away ever got recovered. The question I kept asking was simple: once waste leaves the bin, who takes responsibility for it? Green Planet was our answer. The first real test came at New Moti Bagh in 2013, where we started source segregation and on-site composting fora government residential colony and showed that it could keep its waste out of the landfill.
PMT : How has Rajesh Mittal’s policy and recycling experience shaped the company’s vision?
RM : I have worked on plastic waste for more than two decades, long before EPR became a boardroom word. In 1999 I was part of the delegation of Delhi’s plastic recyclers, manufacturers and traders that met the Prime Minister, and served on the Task Force and the Delhi Vidhan Sabha Select Committee that year. That taught me one thing: a policy only works if the waste picker, there cycler and the municipal officer can all actually follow it. That is how we design everything at GPWM.
PMT : What motivated GPWM to combine waste processing with EPR compliance under one platform?
RM : We could see the gap from both sides. Brand owners were buying EPR certificates without knowing where the plastic had gone, while genuine processors struggled to get recognised. Since we were already handling the material, taking it through to compliance was natural, and we started our EPR practice in 2019. That April, CPCB recognised us as a Producer Responsibility Organisation under the framework then in place, since consolidated into the centralised EPR portal. When we file are turn, we can stand behind the numbers.
PMT : How do your Material Recovery Facilities improve the efficiency of municipal waste segregation?
RM : Most of the efficiency comes from discipline rather than machinery. Waste is weighed and logged, then sorted by hand into paper, cardboard, different grades of plastic, metal and glass, and each fraction goes to an authorised recycler who can actually use it. Wet waste is composted on site wherever possible. We run MRFs at Safdarjung Hospital, at Central Vista on Kartavya Path and at New Moti Bagh, and the same routine works at all three.
PMT : What technologies are used to ensure complete traceability of EPR certificates from collection to processing?
RM : The real work is verification. Every movement of material must be backed by weighment records, invoices and the processor’s own documentation, and we only work with processors whose capacity and paperwork we have checked ourselves. Over the years we have learnt whose paper is good and whose is not. Certificates are generated on CPCB’s Common EPR Portal; our job is to make sure what goes onto the portal matches what happened on the ground.
PMT : How is GPWM helping Indian brands simplify multi-stream EPR compliance across different waste categories?
RM : A mid-sized brand today can have obligations under the plastic, e-waste, battery, tyre and used oil rules at the same time, each with its own targets, deadlines and portal requirements.
Most compliance teams are small and are not waste specialists. So we act as a single desk for all of it: registration, target and credit calculations, sourcing verified certificates, annual returns, and keeping up with the amendments. We currently advise more than 150 clients across FMCG, electronics, packaging, energy and manufacturing.
PMT : What innovations have strengthened your waste collection and processing network across North India?
RM : Our biggest lesson was to work with the informal sector, not around it. In Rohtak we registered 73 waste pickers at our collection centre and bought plastic directly from them. In Delhi we worked with NDMC to bring ragpickers into dry waste collection. We did not build a fleet of our own; transport was hired. What we built instead was a network of municipal empanelments across Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, authorised processors and paper mills, and cement plants for co-processing what could not be recycled.
PMT : How do data-driven waste management practices improve operational transparency for your clients?
RM : For a client, transparency means a quick answer to four questions: how much, from where, sent to whom, and when. At our facilities waste is weighed and recorded every day, staff work on ID based accountability, and clients receive a monthly report. On the EPR side, every quantity we report is tied to a document the client can check, so when an auditor or a Pollution Control Board official raises a query, the answer is already on file.
PMT : What has been the key strategy behind sustaining over 15 years of waste management operations?
RM : Doing a few things properly rather than many things loosely. New Moti Bagh has run since 2013 without a breakdown, and that kind of continuity only comes from showing up every day. We also design models that pay for themselves. At Safdarjung Hospital we charge no service fee; the MRF runs on the value of the recovered material and the earnings are shared with the hospital. It has handled more than 8,755 tonnes since April 2022
“AI-based sorting, robotics and sensor tracking will all come, and some are already here as pilots. But in India the bigger gains will come from simpler things done at scale: segregation at source, decentralised composting, and good baling so low-value plastic is worth transporting. For mixed plastics, I would watch catalytic depolymerisation and pyrolysis closely. We have worked with POLYCRACK technology since2014; it converts plastic nobody wants into light diesel oil.
-Rajesh mittal “
PMT : How can digital tracking and automation enhance the future of Extended Producer Responsibility implementation?
RM : The latest update to the EPR portal has significantly improved traceability, which was the biggest weakness of the system. With all waste streams now on the Common EPR Portal, it is far harder for a certificate to exist without real material behind it. From here, further automation, such as matching processor output against invoices and material movement, will close the remaining gaps and reward genuine recyclers.
PMT : What research opportunities exist for improving the recovery of low-value plastic and mixed waste materials?
RM : Multi-layer packaging is the hardest problem in the country, and it is where brand owners struggle most to meet their targets. Three areas need serious research: packaging that is recyclable by design, chemical routes such as pyrolysis that can handle contaminated material economically at smaller scale, and cleaner fuel substitutes for cement kilns. The economics matter as much as the chemistry. A process that cannot pay for itself in the field will not last.
PMT : How do you see India’s circular economy evolving over the next decade?
RM : I am optimistic, though progress will not bein a straight line. EPR has already changed boardroom conversations; ten years ago few brand owners asked where their packaging ended up. Over the next decade, recycled-content mandates will create real demand for recycled material, responsibility will extend to more streams, and data will become far more reliable. The weak link will still be segregation at source.
PMT : What infrastructure investments are essential to increase the nation’s recycling capacity?
RM : First, many small, well-run facilities rather than a few very large ones: ward-level MRFs, decentralised composting at colonies, markets and hospitals, and proper collection centres where waste pickers can sell material at a fair price. Then automated sorting at the regional level and more capacity for low-value plastic. Justas important is the software that connects it all, because a plant nobody can verify is of little use to an EPR system.
PMT : Which new waste streams present the greatest opportunities for technological development and sustainable growth?
RM : Solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, without doubt. Both will arrive in large volumes over the next ten years and both contain valuable material. Textiles are another big opportunity, along with construction and demolition waste and end-of-life vehicles, which are now coming under a formal framework. Each needs its own collection model and its own technology, and that is where the next generation of recycling businesses will come from.