Zubair Qureshi Islamabad
Coca-Cola Pakistan and Afghanistan has partnered with Capital Development Authority (CDA) and TeamUp / National Incubation Center (NIC) to work towards creating a World Without Waste.
This mega-project involves locally introducing the concept of re-carpeting national roads with plastic waste.
For now, a 1-km road in the Islamabad Capital will be modelled under the concept. This partnership was finalized on Tuesday in an MOU signing ceremony held at the TeamUp / NIC offices in Islamabad.
Rana Shakeel Asghar Member Finance & Environment CDA on behalf of the civic agency signed the MoU. “We believe in a clean and green Pakistan, but we also believe in working with each other to create results expansively” he said.
Environmental experts and government officials discussed and debated the project in a panel discussion that followed the signing.
Fahad Ashraf, VP and General Manager of Coca-Cola Pakistan-Afghanistan said, “This idea provides a break through solution to bring back plastic waste into the productive economy. And we also want to focus on building a community around the idea and the innovation itself.
For any concept to be applied and adopted, the people must first believe in it. And it needs to make social and commercial sense.”
This is where TeamUp and NIC come in. Working towards expanding the idea nationwide via hackathons, conferences, white papers, policy changes, and a coalition of partners, TeamUp/NIC hope to make this a success.
Parvez Abbasi representing the strategic leadership of the TeamUp/NIC added, “When Coca-Cola came to us with the willingness to be part of the solution, we were keen to lead this because most of the startups and projects here are guided by the Sustainable Development Goals.”
This project by Coca-Cola Pakistan has adopted the process of sustainable innovation whereby the scale is large — almost 8 tonnes of recycled plastic is used only to re-carpet a one kilometre patch of road.
