GS Paper III

News Excerpt: 

The Union Minister of Science and Technology has released a flagship document on ‘National Circular Economy Roadmap for reduction of Plastic waste in India’, a collaborative exercise between leading research institutions from India and Australia.

About the roadmap:

The Government of India’s commitment to addressing plastic waste challenges and consequential human health and ecological impact concerns has been a key motivation for the development of a roadmap to help drive the transformation of the plastic waste economy in India into a circular economy.

• This Circular Economy Roadmap for Plastics in India, prepared by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)  with support from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, identifies the key demand and supply potential across the entire value chain for fostering circularity in plastics and includes a specific focus on the downstream issues on reducing, reusing, and recycling plastics. 
• It aims to decouple plastics production from virgin fossil feedstock, incentivize the use of recycled plastics to substitute virgin plastics, encourage responsible design, and strengthen and expand plastic recycling and reutilization. 
• The implementation of the actions suggested in the roadmap will help address the social and environmental challenges due to the mismanagement of plastic waste and the associated economic costs, while also decreasing unnecessary plastic consumption.

Challenges Associated with Plastics Circular Economy in India

A significant share of household waste is plastic, with 50% to 80% of that plastic being collected, and only 40% of that is segregated for resource recovery. The rest is either incinerated or dumped and can find its way into water bodies and become part of the food chain for humans, and marine and terrestrial life.

The Need to Solve India’s Plastics Problem 

Plastic, one of the great inventions of the 20th century, is now seemingly indispensable. However, its lifestyle and economic benefits come at a steep cost, making it one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. 

• India generates nearly 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste each day (CPCB, 2020), 3.46 million tonnes (Mt) per year, more than any economy except the USA and European Union.
• Three-quarters of this waste consists of three polymers, polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), the rest stems from the other members of the polymer family.
• Packaging dominates consumption, with a share of 59%, followed by building and construction (13%) and agriculture (9%).
• Most of India’s waste is handled either by small businesses or workers in the informal sector, with their material flows being fragmented and difficult to track. 

• • As a result, the sector is dominated by low-skilled labour, manual segregation, uncertain pay and lack of social security, weak medical and human health support, and weak environmental protections against leaching into soil, air, and water.

• The July 2022 government ban on single-use plastics only covers about 10% to 15% of plastics used. 

Different types of Plastics

Transitioning to a circular economy:

The opportunities and benefits are social, environmental, economic, and international. 

A circular economy can:

• Divert dry waste from landfills, leading to a cleaner environment, 20% to 50% less greenhouse emissions, improved air quality, and reduced microplastics in the food chain.
• Integrate the informal sector into the formal economy by recognizing their role, enabling their access to government services and benefits, and supporting them in developing their business ventures in the sector.
• Support a cultural shift, away from ‘use and throw’, to one that leads future generations to value resources and care for the environment even as they develop their economy. 
• Create new secondary markets for used plastics in construction and manufacturing, and new primary markets for alternative, eco-friendly products.
• Accelerate India’s progress on the SDGs and its commitments under the Global Plastics Treaty (2024).
• Offer an example for emerging economies of the Asia Pacific, Africa, and Latin America, to support transformative change at the global scale.

The Seven Elements of the Circular Economy for Plastics In India

Any steps towards a circular economy will improve plastic waste management in India. Planning these steps must take into account a clear framework for the plastics circular economy in India. In our framework, there is a clear flow of materials through three broad stages, supported by four primary enablers.

In a circular economy, all these elements would be developing at once, each supporting the others as a true system.

• Collaborative Production
  • Aim: It is to design products that can be easily and efficiently recycled, with minimal contamination, to reduce waste, and promote a circular economy – by using materials that are widely accepted for recycling, minimising the use of additives, designing products for disassembly, and providing clear instructions for recycling.

• Sustainable consumption
  • Aim: For consumers to avoid single-use plastics, choose products with extended lifetimes, reuse plastics, choose products made with recycled plastic, and segregate plastic at end-of-life to facilitate recycling. 
• Effective recycling
  • Aim: To promote closed-loop recycling and chemical upcycling technologies, to retain plastic in the material loop for longer, and so reduce dependency on virgin resources and the environmental impact of plastic waste.
• Commercial viability
  • Aim: For small businesses and industries who want a part in the circular economy, who need a financially viable path to get there, with finance available, markets to sell to, and preferential incentives to build their businesses. 
• Awareness and readiness
  • Aim: For communities and industry to play their roles in the plastics circular economy, we need systematic engagement strategies to raise awareness, open-access platforms to share information, and opportunities for skills and innovation training.

• Supportive infrastructure
  • Aim: To invest in recycling and digital infrastructure needed to collect, sort, track, and assess the quality and value of end-of-life plastics, including horizontal integration of recyclers and industries that take up secondary materials.
• Consistent compliance
  • Aim: To establish easily understandable rules for the plastic value chain including shared definitions and agreed standards to guide product design, production processes, consumption, and appropriate treatment and management of end-of-life plastics.

Way Forward: 

Central agencies like the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change(MoEFCC), the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and the Department of Chemicals, as well as state public actors and local bodies, etc., can accelerate a plastics circular economy.

• Setting the leadership agenda with comprehensive policy strategies focused on the circularity agenda
• Ensuring there is adequate resourcing to monitor and enforce those regulations, particularly at the state and municipal levels
• The potential changes in the main streams under the IPWM (Improved Plastic Waste Management) scenario are provided below: 

• • single-use plastics could be reduced by 20% by 2025, then 50% by 2030, and be phased out completely by 2035; 
  • recycling rates would increase from 13% in 2025 to 67% in 2035; 
  • landfill could be reduced by 10% in 2025, then 30% by 2035; and 
  • mismanaged or untracked waste streams could be reduced by 30% in 2025 and up to 80% by 2035, with coherent collection systems and large-scale behaviour change in businesses and households.

• An Innovation Hub could be a mechanism to support India’s transition to a circular economy for plastics.