Pakistan may record South Asia’s lowest plastic-waste leakage rate, but Karachi’s informal recycling economy reveals a gap. Recyclers even import used milk jugs from Ohio and may advise Saudi Arabia on plastic street pavers. Yet thin biscuit, chips, paan and medicine wrappers often avoid landfills only to return as polluted air. Official estimates show Pakistan generates about 3.3 million tonnes of plastic waste yearly, much of it poorly managed.
At small units in Paracha, a corner of Karachi’s Shershah market, workers sort household waste by colour. Machines crush usable plastic, push out black strands, cool them in water and cut them into one-millimetre pellets called dana. Factories use the pellets to make new plastic products.
One unit produced green dana, while another processed cleaner, unused medical waste. But coal-like blocks also covered the floor. “What’s that on the floor?” the reporter asked. “That’s gatha,” workers replied.
Why Multi-Layered Plastic Has Little Value
Gatha comes from multi-layered plastic, or MLP, one of the least valuable forms of packaging waste. Manufacturers use an outer BOPP or PET printing layer, adhesive and an inner CPP or LDPE sealant. Some add aluminium or metallised film for longer shelf life or extra shine. This gives MLP its local name, “chamak patti.” Metatex director Hasan Khanani said some packaging contains up to seven layers.
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Those materials protect food, but they make recycling costly. Different polymers have different properties and melting points, while the layers resist separation. Research confirms that multilayer packaging remains difficult to recycle through conventional systems.
A plastic bottle can sell for up to Rs150 per kilogram, Irverde CEO Angel Imdad said. Mixed MLP fetches only about Rs6. One PET bottle also weighs roughly as much as 100 wrappers, so waste pickers favour bottles.
“It isn’t viable to spend Rs20,000 to transport MLP, as its volumetric weight is a lot more than its physical weight,” Imdad said. “People don’t even reach breakeven.”
Recycling Waste Into a New Health Threat
Informal operators often burn MLP in open karahi-like containers. The melted sludge cools into hard gatha blocks. Textile dyeing units, small steel re-rolling mills and kilns reportedly buy them as cheap fuel.
Safer methods exist. Mechanical compaction uses pressure below the plastic’s flashpoint. Pyrolysis heats waste between 450°C and 650°C in an oxygen-deprived chamber, breaking polymers into petroleum derivatives rather than openly burning them.
Poorly controlled burning can release acid gases, chlorine, heavy metals, dioxins and other toxic pollutants. Research also shows that small community fires may create greater exposure risks than large dumps because smoke stays closer to residents.
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Regulated economies classify similar material as solid recovered fuel and control its use in high-temperature industry. Karachi’s off-the-books production and use face little visible oversight. Sources told Dawn that some operators move locations to avoid detection.
Pakistan’s wrapper recycling story carries a grim warning. Turning MLP into fuel does not remove pollution. It simply shifts it from landfill to lungs.
