India's efforts to ban single-use plastic - are we doing enough ?

India's decision to impose complete ban on single-use plastics from 2022 is a welcome move, making the right step in direction of sustainability. We produce daily nearly 25000 metric tonnes of plastic waste and only 15000 metric tonnes get picked up for recycling. This means, every day we leave behind 10,000 tonnes of plastic (nearly 40%) in the environment and this plastic finds its way into sewage, drains, and ultimately into the sea.

While the Govt's intent to create barriers for use of single-use plastic is in the right direction, implementation of this decision will be crucial in this fight against the use of this plastic. Single-use plastic accounts for nearly 43% of the total plastic consumption in the country. India uses about 22 million tonnes of plastic to produce various products and only 8 million tonnes is recycled plastic (just 36%). This means a lot of new plastic still goes into making new products for various applications. What happens to all the remaining plastic which sits in various forms on the planet? While all plastics are not bad as they provide some very unique quality of being lightweight and durable, their use in many applications eventually means that the demand for the same will continue to grow. This industry today in India has more than 50,000 manufacturers and while their livelihood depends on it, we have to think beyond to see how the use of plastic can be controlled and reduced to a level where it can be sustainable (moving towards100% recyclable plastic). The industry is growing at 10% CAGR and it provides opportunities to many. The efforts from the Govt to ban single-use plastic have to be implemented with a good alternative materials plan. It's a good start but not enough. Unless, the industry starts thinking innovatively to find solutions that involve non-plastic, bio-degradable material for use, we are eventually going to find ourselves not being able to effectively stop the use of this plastic. Recycling of existing plastic will also need to go up while the use goes down. We need this to happen now if we have to save things. More recycling units need to be encouraged to come up in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model.

While India's plastic consumption per capita at 20kg is much lower than other developed countries, given the size of our country, this still translates into a huge amount. We are producing 9.6 million tonnes of waste yearly (2020) and not enough recycling to take care of it. To add to this problem, the recent Covid-19 pandemic is generating more plastic in the form of PPEs and protection materials. We are yet to ascertain the full impact of it. Ban of single-use plastic will have to be implemented not just at the consumer level but at the manufactures' level too. So far there has not been much change seen at that level, although large MNCs are making conscious efforts to change their packaging strategies and include materials that are easy on the environment at the same time which don't add more cost to the product & packaging. More efforts and incentives may be required to get other smaller manufacturers to think of non-plastic options as a substitute. We have seen in recent years, initiatives from various organisations exploring the use of new materials for such use. But still, we haven't seen a mass-scale adoption of these alternatives. The use of paper or glass as an alternative has its implications as paper needs felling of trees and glass creates more carbon footprint due to the use of more power. As per industry experts, the paper industry may take up to 25% of the share left behind by plastic packaging after the ban. But this is not fundamentally solving the problem. There is an urgent need to think beyond these and look at ways in which more recyclable materials can be introduced in the value chains. There is also a need to look at new ways to use packaging (recycling of packaging containers not just at the consumers level, but also at manufacturers' level) and introducing other innovative ways of using the products without compromising the quality and hygiene factors.

All this needs a planned, concerted strategy from the Govt and other stakeholders including manufacturers and industry bodies so that while people from the industry are not impacted on their livelihood, yet we make this change to reduce the use of plastics in our day to day life. Many may think that this problem has been created by the developed nations and they should be doing more, but all countries including India are getting impacted due to it. We have to take a firm stance and move forward and perhaps lead by example for bringing this under control. If we can show our firm resolve in moving to greener power in the last 5-7 years by shifting to renewables (solar & wind primarily), we can do the same for tackling this menace. It's our responsibility to clean up this mess which we will otherwise be leaving behind for the coming generations.

References : Various articles published on the Net. Picture credits : TOI & other publications.