Svanika Balasubramanian

Company: rePurpose Global
Title: Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer
Industry: Waste management
Hometown: Muscat, Oman
Notable in 2023: Collaborated with 300-plus consumer brands to reduce plastic waste and increase margins.

Plastic waste is one of the biggest environmental problems that exists, and experts say consumers won't simply recycle their way out of it. Recycling is expensive. Not all plastic can be recycled. And most alarming, according to Svanika Balasubramanian, co-founder and CEO of rePurpose Global, the global economy has pushed the plastics issue off on low-income, exploited communities around the world.

Instead of a waste economy tied to a circular economy that functions in line with the broader goal of reaching plastic neutrality in the decades ahead, her research uncovered what she has called "an unregulated, corrupt informal waste sector" engaging millions of people from impoverished communities.

The same communities with decades of experience handling waste don't lack innovative ideas, she says. What they lack to grow and scale is capital. That is the challenge for rePurpose Global: building a platform to identify, finance and scale innovation for the plastic waste crisis.

According to the UN, the world is producing 430 million metric tons of new plastics every year and is on pace to triple that by 2060, with current rates of recycling only covering 9% of plastics. RePurpose Global collaborates with consumer brands, policymakers and innovators on concepts including plastic credit financing, inspired by carbon credits, which give consumer packaged goods companies and retailers, among others, a pathway to create an impact at the local waste management level.

Roughly 300 brands, including Johnson & Johnson, Clorox, Thrive Market and Burt's Bees have recently collaborated with rePurpose. 

The organization's efforts have recovered roughly 60 million pounds of plastic which otherwise would have leaked into nature, and wrought change on a global waste management industry where the average life expectancy of workers is under 40. 

"It's a plastic crisis and a humanitarian catastrophe," Balasubramanian said in a presentation she gave as part of a fellowship with the Emerson Collective, the philanthropic group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. "We cannot turn a blind eye anymore, so what do we do?"