By Yohan Perera

 Ceylon Eco Friendly Products (Pvt.),which came up with an innovative project to recycle shredded currency, had got clearance from international patent rights bodies and is now slated to start up an international level business.
The new method is registered under the international patent system, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), with the file reference PCT/IB2023/057500. The International Searching Authority, which is the Korean Patent Office, has issued the International Search Report with A grade. 

“More importantly, in the Written Opinion it has identified this invention as novel, inventive and industrially applicable,” Head of Ceylon Eco Friendly Products (Pvt) Ltd Udaya Gunaratne said.

About 200 million grown trees are cut down yearly for paper making. In other words 24 grown trees are required to prepare 1 ton of paper. Currency notes are printed using high quality paper   . 

More than 100 million tons of discarded currency notes are destroyed by the central banks around the world. Discarded currency notes are burnt, or destroyed using various methods, small amounts being reused as raw materials.

 “We have developed a method and technique to use discarded currency notes to produce a strengthened material, few vegetables and fruits such as bottle gourd, sweet melon and lime. We use a substance made out of these fruits to melt the shredded currency. We believe that fruit farmers of this country will benefit from my project as we can purchase fruits from them,” he said.

Gunaratne expressed confidence that their project would save thousands of trees from being felled, thus contributing to the preservation of the environment. He noted that the estimated quantity of discarded currency notes worldwide amounts to millions of tonnes.

The recycled currency notes have various usages, including manufacturing of stationery, packaging materials, souvenir items and even serve as a substitute for wooden planks, said Gunaratne.

He said he is planning to approach authorities of a few countries to get his project going. 

“I am confident that I will be able to go international now that I have got patient rights. It is possible to get 60 tonnes of shredded current per day while 20 tonnes could be secured from Indonesia per day. If I was supported by the Sri Lankan authorities I would have been able to bring in US$ 1.2 million per month. Sri Lanka would not have to go through the painstaking debt restructuring process if such projects went ahead as the funds earned would have solved the forex issue,” he said.

Gunaratne was also planning to launch another ambitious project to come up with an innovative kind of train tickets which could be manufactured locally. He had included vegetable seeds in these tickets. “These tickets could be planted in the home gardens easily.

 This would have helped the Sri Lankan people to cut down their expenditure for essential food crops. More importantly Sri Lanka would have been able to cut down its import expenditure and correct its balance of payment disequilibrium to a great extent,” Gunaratne said. However it is still left to be seen whether the country would make use of entrepreneurs like us,” he said.