Cheil Worldwide India and EETech Tackle Hospital Bed Shortages with Covid-19 Waste

Cheil WW India partnered with India-based Eco Eclectic Technologies (EETech), which creates eco-friendly solutions for domestic and industrial waste, to use Covid-19 pandemic waste material from face masks and PPE, to make hospital beds. 

India has suffered from a chronic shortage of hospital beds for many years, a situation exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, when thousands of people passed away when they could not receive treatment due to the lack of available beds. In parallel, 100 million masks every month are being thrown into landfills. This non-biodegradable waste is littering our streets, landfills and even our oceans.

In an innovative initiative that aims to tackle this shortage and embrace the circular economy concept, The Novel Bed Project was created by Cheil India in partnership with EETech, the project launches a revolutionary approach to using waste to make hospital beds. 

The partnership with EETech is intended not only to address the shortage of hospital beds but to come up with a long-term solution - a design template for others to follow. Cheil created the concept and product design which is underpinned with EETech’s innovative technology to turn Covid-19 waste into hospital beds.

The process features in a campaign, called ‘The Novel Bed Project’, showing a hospital bed being lovingly created from scratch, using discarded PPE kits, more than a thousand used masks, coffee waste, eco-friendly laminated paper and scrap materials.

Exactly one year after the brutal second wave sent ripples through the country, the first bed made has been endorsed by doctors and donated to a hospital in Gujurat, serving as a tribute to all the loved ones we had lost during the difficult period. 

The one-minute film, made by production house Epitome, breaks on 27th April in India across digital platforms and aims to educate people about the amount of pandemic waste generated by discarded face masks, how to dispose of it in a way that benefits communities and how it can be used to overcome hospital bed shortages. 

It opens with words paying tribute to the millions of Indians who weren’t able to access a hospital bed, and who passed away as a result of Covid-19, before showing a bed being carefully made from waste material. It ends with the message: “We didn’t display this bed in a museum. We donated it to a hospital. Because we learnt, every single bed matters.”

A dedicated website gives further information on how people can be a part of the Novel Bed Project, with information on how and where to send in used masks that can be turned into beds. 

Dr. Binish Desai, founder, Eco Eclectic Technologies, said: “I saw the amount of waste being generated by single use masks and I started experimenting. I don’t see waste as a waste, I see it as a resource. As humans we have created it, so it is our responsibility to get rid of it and so I started this particular project. Coming up with innovation from pandemic-related waste is very important.”

Emmanuel Upputuru, CCO at Cheil India said: “We needed a novel way to address Covid waste in a way that would benefit society. With the dire shortage of hospital beds in India, we knew of no better way to repurpose the waste than to create much needed hospital beds. Something only possible by collaborating with Dr Desai’s EETech, the world leaders in breakthrough recycling technologies. The first bed produced was presented to a hospital in Gujurat as a tribute to the ones we lost.”

The Novel Bed Project was executed by IDA, a Gujarat based NGO, whose aim is to provide employment to local women including some sex workers who lost their livelihood because of the pandemic. 

To know more about The Novel Bed Project, log on to thenovelbedproject.com or EETech’s website.