Apropos the letter ‘Recycling bottles’ (June 24). The writer has given a suggestion regarding recycling mineral water bottles which, if done locally and exported, could generate a huge amount of foreign exchange for the country.

These bottles are at present being exported in their shredded forms to China. Could the government tell us why we can’t add value to these bottles by making T-shirts and then export them?

To add value, we will need machinery and trained manpower.

If the cost of 10 empty bottles is Rs20, then the cost of a T-shirt made out of the plastic of 10 bottles could be $50 or Rs6,000. Our businessmen should grab this window of opportunity.

A friend of mine has been in the business of exporting shredded bottles to China. The manpower employed by him for shredding used to mix the caps of the bottles with the shredded bottles which affected the end product.

He was invited to China and shown the correct method of shredding.

The setting up of the facility must have cost my friend one million rupees at the most. But he was successfully exporting his material to China, though in its raw form. Had he been provided the necessary funds by the government to import the required machinery, he would have earned a huge amount of foreign exchange in return.

A. Khan
Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2018