A concerning issue

The Union government notified the Plastic Waste Management (Second Amendment) Rules, 2021 on September 22 — just weeks after the first amendment was notified on August 12, listing 20 single-use plastic items to be phased out. The latest notification is a U-turn by the Centre.

The use of recycled plastic was prohibited for food contact applications in the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016. This proposal was skipped in the Draft Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2021, formulated in March this year.

The latest amendment allows the recycling of "plastic or products made of recycled plastic to be used for storing, carrying, dispensing or packaging ready to eat or drink foodstuff"

It was only in 2018 that the FSSAI banned the use of recycled plastic or newspaper for packaging of food items from July 1, 2019. Ideally, FSSAI, being the competent authority for food safety in the country, should have initiated the amendment in their policy.

The stand and the approach taken by the Union government in notifying this amendment is difficult to understand.

Two major rules have been added to the Plastic Waste Management Rules without them being part of the Draft rules 2021. This means, no public consultation happened around these two issues.

First, the rules provided a moratorium of 10 years to big companies to keep polluting, assuring that more single-use plastic products will be added to the phase-out list only after a decade from the notification of the first amendment of 2021.

This is in addition to the use of recycled plastics for food products introduced in the latest amendment.

Composition of recycled plastics

Materials like glass, aluminium and steel are recycled and used for food contact applications. Contamination after its use has not been a problem with them. These materials are recycled endlessly with a recycling efficiency of 75 per cent.

There are, however, over 4,000 legacy chemicals that are inherently present in post-consumer plastic. These are primarily a result of the plastic additives for desirable properties.

Why is it a problem?

India recycles 60 per cent of its plastic waste. A lion's share of this is done by the informal workforce in the country. The crude methods used by them to produce plastic pellets raise concerns, especially around contamination and purity issues.

Plastic is used in a variety of sectors ranging from medicines to chemical fertilizers, which also raises the concern around the source of the recycled plastic that will be used in food contact applications.

A growing body of research proves there is migration of chemicals from plastics to food. In a blended product, it is practically impossible to tell the amount of recycled plastic that has been added to the final product.

The only way to ascertain the concentration of recycled plastic is by labelling. There is no way to corroborate the claims a producer makes while labelling. The only option we have is to trust the producer.

This may give the big players a way out to keep using virgin polymers, while improving the eco-conscious image of their brand in the minds of consumers.

Global practices

In the US, manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that the recycled product is of suitable purity.

These requirements have been laid out in the federal regulations and the suggestions for the use of recycled plastic in product packaging are contained in the Guidance for Industry.

The Food and Drug Administration in the US is very well aware of the contaminants from post-consumer plastic that may appear in the final product. Therefore, each proposal of using recycled plastic is evaluated before issuing a no-objection letter.

The European commission back in 2018 was preparing to fast-track approval of 140 recycling processes for use in food and drinks packaging.

"Only food-contact materials and articles that contain recycled plastics obtained from an authorised recycling process may be marketed in the EU after petitions for recycling processes are evaluated," according to regulation 282 / 2008.

Moreover, plastics regulation 10 / 2011 outlines specific requirements for manufacturing and marketing within the EU plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food.

These deliberations have been going on for long and only a handful of regulations have come in from time to time.

Most countries in Asia lack a specific regulation to explicitly allow or prohibit the use of recycled plastics in food applications. Recent updates by Korea, China and Thailand indicate that the region may soon see food packaging applications using recycled materials.

Industrial packaging happens to be the highest user of plastic. This is why the world's major economies have set a priority to develop guidelines to ensure that products made with recycled plastic are fit for being used in packaging and food packaging applications.

Recommendations for India

The first and foremost aspect of notifications has to be transparency to inform us of the intent and objective of the government.

Opaque processes and half-baked notifications only add to the confusion of how the notification has to be interpreted.

Before the FSSAI takes a call to include recycled plastic for food contact applications, we have to ensure the following things:

• Most, if not all, our plastic has to be recycled in authorised recycling facilities.

• The use of recycled plastic should have been mandated for non-food applications initially to understand the issues faced by the industries in terms of production and social acceptability.

• An inventory needs to be created of the types of processes that we have in the country to recycle our plastics and then identify the safe plastic recycling processes.

• Guidelines are required for the use of recycled plastic for packaging of ready-to-eat food materials.

A working mechanism needs to be developed with all the stakeholders, which include but are not limited to MoEFCC, FSSAI, the Central Pollution Control Board, all the State Pollution Control Boards and the Pollution Control Committees, the Urban Local Bodies, representatives of the plastic industry, including the plastic recycling industry as well as consumers.

Views expressed are personal