A make-or-break ban

Source: The post is based on an article “A make or break ban” published in the Business Standard on 10^th July 2022.

Syllabus: GS 3 Ecology and Environment

Relevance: Plastic Ban

News: Recently, India’s ban on certain single-use plastic has come into effect from July 1, to control the menace of plastic pollution.

The banned items include earbuds, cutlery, straws, and carry bags. And items of thickness less than 120 microns will be banned by December 2022.

Other laws for single-use plastic like multi-layered packaging

The extended producer responsibility (EPR) notification applies to all the packaging material. The companies that manufacture or consume this material are required to take it back and send it for reprocessing.

What are the limitations of the legal regime for plastic ban?

The current ban

The current ban is limited in sense because the plastic items that are difficult to collect or recycle are required to be eliminated from use. But it is difficult. For example, according to the latest report of the CPCB, 25 states and UTs have already banned such plastic. But these states say that it is difficult to regulate these items based on plastic thickness.

It has been found that the enforcement of the plastic rules remains inadequate in India.

The current list of banned items is not comprehensive. In order to get rid of the items that are difficult to collect or are single-use, then the list should have included multi-layered packaging, used from chips to shampoos to gutka pouches.

Issues with EPR

The EPR has been poorly designed and is being poorly implemented. There is no information on the quantity of the plastic material generated. The companies are not required to self-declare. There is a lack of information in the public domain to assess the implementation of the EPR regime.

The companies are required to recycle or reprocess the material they collect only by 2024.

There is no adequate information on whether the plastic waste that is being collected is being stored or dumped?

The Producer Responsibility Organisations (PRO) which fulfil the EPR targets on the behalf of the companies, sort the waste collected from municipal bodies. The PROs sort the items and simply store the items that could not be recycled, in the warehouse. These items are not processed but dumped into the yard.

What should be done?

We can adopt a three-pronged strategy to ensure plastic items are recycled or disposed of safely:

First, all the plastic produced and used should be collected for disposal.

Second, the waste plastic material must be recycled or incinerated. And, it should not reach landfills or choke the water bodies at any cost.

Third, further the reuse or disposal of the plastic materials has to be in a manner that is environmentally friendly and does not end up creating more pollution or health hazard for workers.

The solution for those items that are difficult to collect and process can be to send them to cement plants for incineration.

We should become responsible for our own waste and not use the banned items.