Post-harvest pickup of used mulch and greenhouse film from farm clusters
TL;DR Mulchback collects used mulch and greenhouse film from farms in one horticulture cluster after each harvest. It shakes off the soil, weighs the film, bales it and sells the bales to registered recyclers. Farmers get a free or paid pickup instead of burning it, and recyclers, input companies and FPOs pay.
Plastic mulch raises yields, but the film tears and stays behind in the soil. A 2025 study in coastal Udupi found mean microplastic counts of about 236 items per kg of soil in watermelon fields mulched for over 15 years, against about 66 in nearby paddy, with film fragments making up 61% of particles[2]. At a Maharashtra dump where farmers threw old film, soil held 87.57 pieces per kg[1].
Collection barely exists. Most villages have no waste system, two-thirds of households say they'd rather burn plastic, and nobody keeps records of farm plastic[1].
So what does a farmer pulling film off a strawberry or chilli bed do with it? Burns it, buries it or leaves it there.
What it does, in regulatory terms: collection, segregation and sale of plastic waste to registered processors. Mulchback does not recycle or burn plastic itself, so it avoids running a processing plant under the Plastic Waste Management Rules[3]. Check with your State Pollution Control Board whether a baling yard needs consent.
A crew turns up on a booked date after harvest. Film gets lifted, shaken and rolled on the field, weighed on a portable scale and logged against the farmer's phone number. The rolls go to a village aggregation point and get baled by grade - clean mulch, dirty mulch and greenhouse cover. Bales go to recyclers, or to cement-kiln co-processing when they're too dirty to recycle.
The seed pitched pyrolysis for ocean plastic and farm film together, and I reframed it. They're different waste streams, and a pyrolysis plant only pays if clean feedstock turns up reliably, which in India just doesn't happen yet. Build the collection first and then sell to whoever processes best.
Farmers are users and not payers at first, though a small per-acre fee can come later. Money comes from three places. Recyclers pay per kg for baled film, but there's no public price list for scrap farm film. Input companies and film makers can sponsor pickups, like two agrochemical companies did when they funded a farm-plastic take-back pilot in Nashik[4]. FPOs pay a service fee to keep members' fields clean.
Plastic EPR became certificate-based in February 2022, and plastic sheets are named in Category II of the rules[3]. Whether farm film can earn certificates is still unclear, and that's worth asking CPCB about now. Soil studies from 2025 put numbers on the damage[1][2], and input companies have already shown they'll fund pilots[4].
There's no public figure for how much farm film India uses, throws out or collects. The narrowest proof of demand is the Nashik pilot, which covered over 60 villages and 1,500 farmers in its first phase[4]. FAO counted 12 million tonnes of plastic used in global crop and livestock production in 2019[1], but that's adjacent context and not your market.
A pilot backed by two agrochemical firms, a large farmer company and a waste-tech platform set up 12 bins around Nashik, mostly for empty agrochemical containers[4]. Waste-trading platforms run EPR services across categories[6]. France's industry-run farm-plastics scheme is the model to study - it works with 300,000 farmers through 1,376 collection operators and more than 600 companies that sell farm inputs[5].
India has nothing like it for film.
| Difficulty | Moderate (42/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹40–80 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The tech is a scale, a baler and an app, that's it. The hard parts are logistics and timing, because film comes off thousands of small plots in a narrow window after harvest and it's caked in soil. You need crews ready on the right weeks, a yard close enough to keep transport cheap and buyers who'll take the dirty grades.
Yes, mostly at the yard and with whoever you sell to. Collecting and selling film is lighter than processing it.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI on whether a buyer is properly registered or whether film counts for EPR. That's a document check and a written answer from CPCB.
Want to work out the AI layer for Mulchback? Talk to Yash →
I'd back this for a founder who knows one horticulture belt and can run trucks and crews on thin margins. If you want software margins then look elsewhere. Before you raise money, prove that one cluster's film sold to recyclers, plus one sponsor's fee, covers the cost of collecting it over a full season.
Plan for roughly ₹40–80 L, mostly crews, a baling yard and transport for the first few clusters.
You don't process plastic, so the heavy registrations sit with your buyers. Your yard may need consent from the State Pollution Control Board, plus GST and DPDP compliance.
Yes. Farm film schemes already run abroad, such as the industry-run scheme in France. Check your own waste and packaging rules before you charge anyone.
The free Mulchback validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the plastic-rules and pollution-board checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for farmers, FPOs and recyclers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Mulchback or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting per-kg collection cost below what recyclers and a sponsor will pay together, and that's exactly the sum I like working through with founders. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.