📦 The Real Cost of Packaging

Why the poorest neighborhoods pay for the richest designs — and how we can fix it.

That shiny sachet of shampoo you used this morning?

It was designed to be cheap.
Designed to last.
Designed to sell.

But never to be recovered.

It can’t be recycled. It can’t be composted. It can’t be incinerated cleanly.

It’s engineered to live forever — in the worst way possible.

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And when it fails?

It doesn’t fail in the boardrooms of FMCG companies.

It fails in Perungudi.
It fails in Dharavi.
It fails in the back lanes of your city where waste flows like water — until the monsoon turns it into floods.

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📦 The True Villain Isn’t Plastic

It’s bad design.

Design that optimizes for consumption speed, not recovery.
Design that adds gloss to the shelf, but filth to the landfill.
Design that serves the brand — but punishes the city.

Every day, on our MRF floors, I see this villain show up.

And every day, I see waste workers — mostly women — try to clean up what never should’ve been designed this way in the first place.

It’s like asking a sweeper to fix a collapsed bridge.
Wrong tool. Wrong stage. Wrong responsibility.

What I saw confirmed what I’ve felt for years:

India doesn’t have a collection problem.
We have a packaging design problem.
And the poorest neighborhoods are paying for it.

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🛠 What Brands Need to Do

It’s easy to blame the consumer.

“It wasn’t disposed of properly.”
“People don’t segregate.”

But here’s the truth:

You can’t recycle what was never recyclable to begin with.

That’s why, at Cercle X, we’ve flipped the question:

“Is this recyclable?”
→ “Is this designed to be recovered in the real world?”

Because recyclability on paper is not the same as recyclability on the ground.

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🔁 The Solution? Start Before the First Batch.

We’ve created a tool we now use with brands across India:

📝 The Circular Brand Assessment Sheet
It’s a pressure-test for packaging before it ever becomes waste.

It scores real-world recoverability, not just theoretical recyclability.

It shows:

• What percentage of your packaging will get recovered

• How it performs across different waste streams

• Where your cost is being dumped (literally)

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🧲 Want a Copy?

If you’re a a sustainability head, EHS, product designer, a brand owner — or just curious…

📥 Reply to this email with “CIRCULAR” and I’ll send you the same sheet we use with the largest FMCGs in India.

Because if we want to make circularity real,
We have to start where the loop begins — not where it ends.

Let’s make waste recovery honest.
Let’s make circularity Indian.
Let’s make it Cercular.

—
Vishnu
Founder, Cercle X ♾️
“Creating a world without waste”

P. S: What can we best do? We can turn MLP into boards and furnitures, and plywood-replacements, even pallets that brands are using to replace their wooden pallets (cost effective, fire proof, termite proof). Want more details?
Call 9080365455.