Just a day to go…

Dated 29th of June 2022

From the 1st of July 2022 - manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of following single use plastic, including polystyrene and expanded polystyrene is prohibited in India - ear buds with plastic sticks, plastic sticks for balloons, plastic flags, candy sticks, ice-cream sticks, polystyrene (thermocol) for decoration, plates, cups, glasses, cutlery such as forks, spoons, knives, straw, trays, wrapping or packing films around sweet boxes, invitation cards, and cigarette packets, plastic or PVC banners less than 100 micron, stirrers.?

This infographic here (courtesy Hindustan times dt. today) captures the coming changes comprehensively

How big is the plastic waste threat?

Globally plastic waste generation (in 2019) is about 359 Mn tonnes (source – Organization of economic cooperation and development (OECD)). India contributes 3.36 Mn tonnes (source – Central pollution control board report 2018-19) annually. Research by OECD indicates that a mere 9% of the global plastic gets recycled while 22% gets mismanaged. The rest either goes into landfills, or is carelessly strewn around or gets incinerated, in short, irresponsibly disposed. The graphic below (courtesy OECD) is an indicator on how poorly the plastic waste is managed across the globe.?

Where does India stand?

In India most of the waste collection happens informally through rag pickers (just as in most emerging and underdeveloped economies). Waste is largely foraged from disposal bins, streets, large and small dumps. Also reliable information for plastic waste management is not available. A lot of waste recycling units are unregistered. Except for some better administered states, most have little data on waste management units. ?

CPCB (Central pollution control board) in India, estimates that about 60% of plastic waste is recycled, while about 40% which is the non-recyclable waste (which is mostly single use plastic) is simply disposed, on roads, open yards, drains and canals. ?

Given here are some findings from CPCB’s annual report on plastic waste management in the country (2018-19) .?

How far will this ban help? Who will be impacted most?

This ban is a very sensible and important first step for many reasons:

1.?????Single use plastics are generally not recyclable, so world over nearly all of that is irresponsibly disposed.

2.?????Lets take straw, one of the 22 single use items banned. It forms just 0.5% of the total volume of single use plastic in India. India uses about 6 Bn plastic straws every year (business standard - https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/fmcg-companies-stand-against-paper-straws-fizzles-out-122050401391_1.html)

3.?????Plastic straws are also among the most carelessly disposed products. They form about a 0,25% of plastic waste by volume under the oceans.

4.?????Single use plastics are often dispensable or replaceable. We don’t need straws and stirrers at all. Plastic plates, spoons and other cutlery have traditional replacements or reusable cutlery or paper based. There are some compostable alternatives like PHA and PLA straws.

On the flip side, many of the manufacturers of single use plastics are small and tiny units. These units will face some disruption. Yet, given that the formal gazette notification for this ban, came way back in 12th Aug 2021 (Gazette notification CG-DL-E-12082021-228947 dated 12th Aug 2021 of Govt of India) many of them have established alternative production / business lines. This fact comes out from our firm (CHISI’s) conversations with around 40 of these small units in south India.?

TN (and some other states too) already have a ban. What has been the experience there? What actually happened on the ground?

In TN, a deep south state in India, single use plastics were banned as far back as 1st Jan 2019, with some exceptions like milk sachets (LDPE, which is not easily recyclable).

TN saw a mini surge in MSME’s set up new manufacturing lines for alternative products like compostable plastic bags or paper straws, with significant borrowing from banks following the ban announcement. This was done in anticipation of demand surge. However, given the significant price differential of these products, vis-à-vis single use plastic (between 200%-500%) market acceptance became a challenge. Sloppy implementation of the law made it even more difficult. However more recently, some studies based on smaller sampling validate this growth in demand. Single use plastics usage has reduced by upto 30%-40% since the ban in Jan 2019 as per these studies. This is certainly a very positive indicator. There is a gradual acceptance of alternative products and production units are slowly but surely recovering from the early setbacks.

Way forward

Already, in preparation for the coming ban, there is a visible reduction of usage of single use plastics in e-commerce and packaging and in organized retail. Groceries and other deliveries these days come in paper bags. Plastic wraps are rare. So, while these are some welcome developments, alternatives like paper for packaging may need further rejig, given that, as volumes grow they may become unsustainable.

Fast foods, take aways, are looking at alternatives like aluminum foil or paper for food or even food grade reusable plastics or certain types of compostable alternatives like PHA (poly hydroxy alkanoate) which can stand heat and moisture. They must dispense with items like plates, straws, spoons (or) incentivize users for avoidance thro bonus points and so on. Nearly all of the other items being banned are not very essential (check at start if the article).

Plastic waste collection must be streamlined but that is easier said than done.

The entire community of rag pickers and informal garbage collectors must be engaged, educated, better remunerated, given social cover and incentivised to collect plastic waste more efficiently and diligently and at source. They must be educated in various types of plastics and means of identification and responsible disposal or non-recyclable plastics.

Consumers must be educated on segregation at source. This is very difficult, since it involves behavioral changes for a humungous and extremely heterogenous population. Attempts at sensitizing consumer on diligently segregating waste have had little success in the past and painstaking efforts by grassroots organizations (like Exnora in Chennai) have had just about marginal impact that too on select and small community segments

The other stakeholder in the plastic recycling value chain are the aggregators and the waste markets. They are the critical via media between rag pickers (or) small traders and recyclers. They must also be sensitized in fair business practices and incentivized to handle and dispose non-recyclable products more responsibly.?

Overall, it is a policy in the right direction

Yes it is, but it needs greater momentum and push to catalyze further forward movement.

For starters – the govt seems to have done well in not postponing the deadline, which is a good sign. The last ditch effort by an influential set of FMCG companies (including AMUL) to convince the government to push deadlines, seems to have failed as of this moment (about 30 hours before the ban comes into force). Very positive indeed.

EPR or extended producer responsibility has been mandated for producers and manufacturers in the gazette notification for all plastic products. This again is a good step. EPR is already in vogue for electronics goods manufacturers, but this brings many larger users from FMCG, logistics and so on under the EPR ambit.

There already is a ban on use of very thin plastic bags (lesser than 75 microns thickness) and by end of 2022, plastics bags shall be no less than 120 microns thickness. These bags can be reused multiple times and recycled.

All good signs indeed.?

From the corporate side too there a lot is desired

There are some efforts by corporate users and producers to promote innovation and viable alternatives, but these today are more symbolic and far from adequate. Given the seriousness of the problem, corporates must come together, create a large financial pool and work with research labs, universities, startups across the globe, even while they continue to search for solutions within.

The innovations must be free of IPR restrictions and must become open source. The solutions must be viewed as saving the planet and not from the narrow prism of corporate profit. ?Corporates and governments must reward innovators handsomely to make up for the lost earnings from royalties

All of us have a role to play too

Lastly all of us as users must become more conscious of our own consumption and usage. In our own firm. CHISI, we took a commitment on world environment day this year to take some concrete steps on personal consumptions and habit changes - (https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6939446756988325888?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web)

Such baby steps collectively contribute a lot. Each one of us in the firm share inputs on one’s own quest for reducing carbon footprint in everyday activities.

?G.Venugopal, Center for High Impact Social Interventions (CHISI) – we are a ESG consulting firm and services ad solutions providers in this space.?