CHENNAI: As pressure mounts globally to curb single-use plastics, India’s hospitality sector is quietly undergoing a shift, with the Chennai-based PBP EcoAqua taking the lead.

The company founder PB Prasad believes decentralised in-house water bottling using reusable glass has helped hotels cut costs and emissions, while removing 56 million plastic bottles from circulation so far.

“The largest single-use plastic consumption in hotels is water bottles. If we had to remove plastic, the alternative was glass, but glass bottles were ten times more expensive and logistically unviable,” Prasad said, recalling discussions with hotel groups in 2018–19 on sustainability challenges.

A former office automation professional who moved to Chennai in 1996 as CEO of a British firm, Prasad

later sold his company and was consulting for global clients when the hospitality assignment changed his career trajectory. “I realised this could not remain a consulting idea.

The scope was too large. I had to get into it fully,” he said.

PBP EcoAqua’s solution was to set up in-house water treatment and glass bottle recycling plants within hotels, allowing water to be purified, bottled, washed and reused on site in a fully compliant manner.

The model keeps costs comparable to plastic bottles while eliminating emissions in the logistics phase. “Earlier, water bottles travelled from factories in other cities by trucks. Today, the entire carbon footprint from logistics is zero,” Prasad told DT Next.

The company works closely with senior experts from IIT-Madras to ensure the eco-friendly systems are scientifically sound and engineered for continuous uptime.

The big break came in the form of the first installation at Taj Palace, New Delhi, and the company has since expanded rapidly. “As we speak, we have removed 56 million plastic bottles from the system.

Every month, we eliminate about 1.5 million bottles, equivalent to nearly 3.86 lakh kg of plastic,” he sought to point out.

PBP EcoAqua now operates 103 plants across 39 cities, servicing over 100 hotels including Taj, ITC, Marriott, Accor, Novotel, Fairmont and Raffles. Jaipur hosts the highest concentration, followed by Bengaluru and Mumbai.

“There is not a single client who has moved away from us in the last three or four years. Service is our biggest differentiator,” Prasad claims, attributing this to his Xerox-era focus on uptime and customer support.

Each plant is manufactured inhouse at the company’s facility

Every month, we eliminate about 1.5 million bottles, equivalent to nearly 3.86 lakh kg of plastic —PB Prasad, founder, PBP EcoAqua

near Chennai, with investments ranging from Rs 4 lakh for compact units aimed at three-star hotels to Rs 25 lakh for larger installations. “We are completely indigenous. Everything is made in India, end-to-end,” he said.

The company expects revenue of Rs 13 to 14 crore this financial year, up from Rs 8 crore last year, and is growing at 50 to 80 per cent annually. International expansion has begun with Sri Lanka and Kenya, while partnerships are being explored in West Asia and South east Asia.

Beyond plastics, Prasad is now focused on improving water efficiency. “RO gives you safe water, but not necessarily healthy water. We are working on technologies that reduce water rejection by up to 80 per cent while retaining essential minerals,” he said.

Reflecting on the journey, he said the motivation remains personal as much as commercial. “At the end of every da y, I see how many bottles we pro duced and how much plastic we eliminated. That sense of contributing to the environment is what keeps us going. We were in the right place, at the right time, doi ng the right thing,” he signed off.