The Accidental Environmentalist 

Dr Medha Tadpatrikar 

How does someone with a background (and PhD) in Branding, Marketing and Journalism find herself becoming an inventor, engineer and creating a business converting waste plastic into usable fuel?

Environmentally conscious from early age Medha, found herself working on waste plastic after witnessing the death of deer in wild life sanctuary, from ingesting plastic.

“We realized that people would say that somebody needs to do something about the plastic waste problem. Then we realized that we were exactly like everyone – we are only talking and thinking,”  Blue Planet

The passion and determination to find a solution on waste plastic resulted in Medha and her business partner Shirish Phadtare build a first pilot machine in 2010 and co-founding Rudra Blue Planet Environmental Solutions (India) Ltd (Formally known as Rudra Environmental Solution India Ltd). Rudra Blue Planet currently runs 3 plants in Jejuri, Pune Municipal Corporation and Kalyan Dombiwali Municipal Corporation.

“We spent a lot of time trying to understand what plastic is – both from a chemical and environmental standpoint. This meant understanding it from the basics – how plastic is made, how long it takes for plastic to disintegrate etc. Since plastic was created only 125 years ago, nobody had any concrete information or had seen it happen.” Blue Planet

Medha is also concerned with educating future generations, conducting more than 1500 awareness programs, talks and seminars on Plastic Waste Management and works with the “Keshav Sita Memorial Foundation Trust” as a trustee. This self-funded Trust collects waste plastic from more than 45,000 households, hotels and offices in and around Pune and beyond and creates awareness of waste plastic and segregation at source for better waste management

Dr Medha also runs Mantraa Research & Consultants Pvt Ltd, and is a  director of Phoenix General Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd. Not surprisingly, Medha is the recipient of a number of awards including: Top 30 Women Transforming India of Niti Ayog (2019); and the Long-term Achievement in Environmental Leadership (2021) by JK Yog in USA.

A trained Bharatanatyam and Kathak dancer, Medha devotes her time on creating awareness on waste plastic and will be sharing her passion with us at the 32nd Inspiring Women Awards lunch on 17/05/2024.