The surprise move of demonetisation announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 had made 23 billion currency notes worthless.
The pile of the stacked notes would be 300 times the height of Mount Everest.
Getting rid of the junked notes, amounting to 86% of the currency in circulation, will be a herculean task for the administration.
A plywood company in Kerala provides a solution for this problem.
For the past one week, Western India Plywoods in Kerala’s Valapattanam has been using the shredded Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes to make hardboard, soft board and pressboard.
The company had already used three containers of shredded notes delivered by the Reserve Bank of India’s regional office in Thiruvananthapuram.
“The currency notes are carefully mixed with the wooden pulp to make hard board,” Malayala Manorama quoted industry workers as saying.
After demonetisation, the company’s management contacted RBI for the tender of shredded notes.
Bank officials, who asked for an estimated quotation, later gave the scrapped notes at a rate of Rs 25 per load. Transportation expense is free of cost.
The old notes collected across Kerala by various bank were shredded in the regional office of RBI.
The initial decision was to burn the old notes. But, the environmental consequences forced officials to change the decision.
