APR Bharat’s ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’ drives PET Recycling along the Kanwad Yatra route

PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/Dehradun

Less than a week into the ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’, the Association of PET Recyclers (APR) Bharat is seeing strong grassroots engagement along the Kanwad Yatra route, with the campaign bringing the message of PET recycling directly to thousands of pilgrims and local communities across Muzaffarnagar and Meerut.

Launched as a 15-day awareness and collection initiative, the campaign’s specially designed mobile van has been moving across high-footfall locations, serving as both an information centre and a collection point for used PET bottles. Over the past six days, the initiative has helped bring thousands of discarded PET bottles into the formal recycling ecosystem, contributing towards the campaign’s larger target of recycling more than 35,000 PET bottles generated during the pilgrimage.

Beyond collection, the campaign is helping make the concept of a circular economy tangible at the grassroots.

“Our main objective of launching ‘Bottle Ki Recycle Yatra’ is to make recycling tangible and relatable. A discarded PET bottle should not be viewed as the end of its journey. With the right collection and recycling systems, it can become the starting point for another bottle. Over the first week, we have seen how powerful direct engagement can be in changing perceptions around plastic waste,” said Goutham Jain, director general, APR Bharat. He stressed that reliance on virgin PET derived from crude oil depletes natural resources. In contrast, the large-scale adoption of recycled PET can help conserve critical resources while accelerating the transition towards a more sustainable, circular, and environmentally responsible plastic value chain.