Originally reported and written in April 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.

One day Kapil Bhatia, a commerce graduate from Mumbai and veteran in the retail industry, was approached by his eight-year-old son, who had just finished a day of online school.

“Today we learnt that by 2050, there will be a lot of plastic waste in the ocean. Why is no one doing anything about this?” the little boy asked.

“He was clearly upset at the sorry state of affairs”, says Kapil, director of Cambridge Textiles — a venture that manufactures and retails readymade garments, supplies uniforms, corporate wear and accessories to various service industries and government organisations.

While his son’s question lingered in his mind, it was only in 2019 when Kapil was participating in exhibitions to expand his apparel business, that an incident occurred which caused him to revisit the worries of his son regarding plastic waste in the ocean.

A unique ask leads to a business

While at the exhibition, Kapil was approached by a customer with a request to make garments from recycled plastic bottles. “The gentleman was from a multinational corporation and looking for uniforms for his team. It was thought-provoking,” says Kapil, who told the gentleman he would get back and went on to research the idea.

Making garments from plastic, he found, was prevalent in Europe and a well-established industry. While in India too there are companies that are engaged in producing garments from plastic, there weren’t many focused on corporate garments. This would be a first, thought Kapil.

“He wanted me to make shirts, blazers, and trousers, which made the task daunting, but I decided to give it a try, and thus Unirec was conceptualised in Mumbai in 2021,” he notes. He adds that his belief in........

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