Seeing a cow eating a plastic bag on a street near Mumbai was Vedant Gandhi’s turning point. With both single-use plastic and cement being major threats to the environment, the engineer decided to repurpose plastic as construction material, thereby addressing the management of two major pollutants. After his initial inspiration hit, he met his co-founder Abhishek Chhazed, who had just finished his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. They set up a small lab in Vedant’s backyard, where they experimented with collected waste from corporations, trying out different samples for making bricks. Every month, the company recycles 20 tonnes of plastic, 300 tonnes of construction and 200 tonnes of industrial waste and avoids producing cement entirely. A five-hour drive outside Mumbai in Gujarat, their manufacturing unit is working on carbon-negative electricity generated from a solar farm nearby.