How MBA Alum Prashant Singh Developed His Vision for a Sustainable Future on a Global Level
Green might be the color most associated with the environment and environmentally-friendly practices. Think of the famed “blue marble” photo of the Earth taken from space, though: a clear visual representation of the remarkable fact that 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is water.
It was that image that Prashant Singh, MBA ’04, had in mind as he co-founded Blue Planet Environmental Solutions, the international waste-management company he now leads as CEO. Now with operations in 15 countries, Blue Planet’s services include recycling, material recovery, hazardous waste disposal, landfill reclamation, biofuel generation and other activities focused on environmental restoration and sustainability.
The company’s connection to the Earth through its waters becomes even clearer through its operations in Singapore, where it’s headquartered, and in New Zealand: two island nations with highly developed economies, where water is all around and resources can still sometimes be scarce.
During a visit to the United States during New York Climate Week, including activities at United Nations headquarters, Singh shared insights from founding and running Blue Planet; his commitment to creating and sustaining a circular economy in support of “people, planet and prosperity”; and how his graduate studies at LeBow prepared him for leading this global venture.
Blue Planet’s Origins
“The idea for Blue Planet came from recognizing a simple but urgent reality: The world was emitting more waste every year, but the systems for managing it were not keeping pace. Waste was largely being collected and disposed of while its potential value as a resource was not being recognized. Solutions in this area are fragmented in nature, with government and industry focused on their own part of the problem, and nobody had been able to stitch solutions together to give a much more holistic, end-to-end solution. That’s the challenge we wanted to solve for.
“In 2017, when Blue Planet moved from just being an idea to being a business, that gave us the conviction that something like this is possible. We brought together companies with specialized capabilities: processing, collection, resource recovery, landfill remediation. It gave both the technical capacity and a much broader ability to take on different waste challenges. We are now one of the largest companies in the world doing landfill remediation. Landfills are an eyesore around the world, and we make them disappear sustainably.”
The biggest change that I’ve seen is sustainability has moved from the margins to the center of many strategic conversations right now over the past decade.
Learning Leadership at LeBow
“Since Blue Planet started, we have expanded across multiple geographies and brought together different businesses with different capabilities. At LeBow, I learned about creating a shared direction while giving strong teams the freedom to lead. We are building a platform through a buy-and-build ethos, so we need to make sure there is enough freedom for those entities in our portfolio. An MBA doesn’t provide a readymade, cookie-cutter formula for building a company like Blue Planet, but what I learned at LeBow gave me the freedom, confidence and broader business perspective needed to turn an ambitious idea into the commercially disciplined enterprise that we are today.”
A Recent Milestone
“One very important moment for us was receiving funding from Novo Holdings in November 2025. Our industry is capital-intensive and needs outside help to scale up. We focus on ESG-mandated execution across the board, but beyond capital, the investment from Novo also represented confidence in what we have built and in the long-term potential of circular economy solutions. That gave us a good shot in the arm not only as a company but as an industry with a long-term future.
“It’s not only about capital, though. We need patient capital: if investors are only focused on returns, they will not appreciate most of the other things we are trying to do to make a positive impact on our communities at large.”
What I learned at LeBow gave me the freedom, confidence and broader business perspective needed to turn an ambitious idea into the commercially disciplined enterprise that we are today.
Commitment to Transparency
“We recently launched our first sustainability report. It’s rare to have that level of transparency, particular among companies operating in the developing world or in our industry, where often the more opaque the business is, the more profitable it is!
“That has been the expectation for decades; we want to disrupt that and say, the more open you are toward your customers and employees and stakeholders, the more trust you build with them. As you build more trust, they will help you, support you in your journey and scale up your business. This report is a pivotal moment for us, and a rare occurrence among other players in the industry today.”
Leaving a Legacy
“The impact I hope to see from our work is very practical: fewer communities living next to unmanaged dump sites, more land resources for productive usage, valuable materials returned to the economy and lower dependence on disposal. I want Blue Planet to be remembered more for the purpose and impact that we have created rather than just being a player in the circular economy, because the projects we have undertaken have such deep meaning for our employees and our communities.
“One that comes to mind is a landfill remediation project in Chennai, in southern India. That project was conducted at a place which used to be a 1200 acre bird sanctuary, beside a 250 acre landfill. Just imagine over the last two decade: birds migrating all the way from thousands of kilometers away, eating garbage and plastics. Out of those 250 acres, we cleared almost 100 acres, removed 1.5 million tons of waste and returned the land to the municipality. They have converted it back into a wetland, and they’ve seen marine diversity coming back over the last three to four years.”
From the Margins to the Center
“The biggest change that I’ve seen is sustainability has moved from the margins to the center of many strategic conversations right now over the past decade. When we started Blue Planet, ESG was just a three-letter word, and now it’s gone from being a hygiene factor to a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’ today. It’s not just a compliance or corporate social responsibility function any longer. More companies are connecting it to supply chain, resilience, access to capital, future-readiness… to me, it’s about meeting customer expectations in order to stay competitive as well, especially among the younger generation. They want to have a future and to be part of the solution.”
