A beginning, not milestone

Countless human inventions, meant for making life convenient, have rather produced threatening side-effects — curtailing the sustainability of life on planet Earth instead. Among the most noticeable of those is the menace of plastic pollution. Today, plastic waste is permeating into living systems — directly or indirectly.

Humans are consuming the non-consumable in the form of micro-plastics — which are seeping into their diets through the fruits and vegetables they eat. Stomachs of cattle, including the holy Indian cow, are choked with lumps of plastic — making those vulnerable to premature death and unhealthy life! For them, there is no respite — neither in life nor beyond.

Apart from terrestrial and aerobic beings, marine wildlife remains the worst affected. Oceanic and riverine creatures are living in the hellish repository of plastic waste we have turned the water-bodies into. And then, like universal sufferers, are dying by eating plastic. Drain blockades resulting from the inflow of plastic waste serve as a source of vector-borne diseases — exposing city- and slum-dwellers to a multitude of health hazards. To its credit, the plastic industry has also created a class of employment — rag-picking — that is seen with the highest degree of contempt and includes direct health risks for the worker.

Perhaps, keeping in imagination the ever-mounting heaps of plastic, the Indian government has partially banned single-use plastic. Any endeavour towards tackling a problem of such wide proportions should be welcomed with an open heart. Given that the ban encompasses only a subset of single-use plastics, and has come after a considerable delay, immediate gains should not be expected. The ban, only if implemented properly, could serve as a foundation stone for the plastic-minimal world we are striving to build, to ensure our safe existence.

In this article, we shall take stock of how much more is left to be done. We shall also try to understand the role, responsibilities and failure (until now) of all stakeholders in keeping a tab on plastic pollution. We shall retrospect how, by being active participants in the anti-plastic drive, each of the stakeholders can utilise the recent ban to planetary advantage.

Is the ban enough?

The recent ban on 21 single-use plastics has attracted criticism mainly on two grounds — one, that the list is not comprehensive and, two, that it excludes multi-layered packaging (MLP). Single-use plastics, as the name suggests, are "plastic items intended to be used once for the same purpose before being disposed of or recycled."

The ambit of single-use plastic is expansive. We can stretch our imagination to a vast multitude of plastic products we use only once and then discard those — from our daily shampoo sachet to wheat flour packets, and the list is endless. Notably, single-use plastic is a utility which becomes a liability, and even a threat, if it doesn't end up in recycling plants or incineration facilities. Existence of discarded plastic into the environment is the real problem. It is difficult to collect and recycle so pervasively littered smaller and thinner plastic items. Even if it was possible for rag-pickers to collect such wastes convincingly, why on Earth would they do so? There is hardly any incentive for them to collect smaller single-use plastic items!

It is where the new plastic ban chips in. It says that the "manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use" of a select number of uncollectable plastic items including polystyrene and expanded polystyrene shall stand prohibited. Environmental experts are describing the 21 selected items as "low-hanging fruits".

However, it may be pointed out that the selection of items was not arbitrary. A 13-member expert committee constituted by the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, after holding year-long deliberation with diverse stakeholders including scientists and research institutions like The Energy Institute of India (TERI), had arrived at the list.

The basic parameters of categorisation included:

1) index of the utility of an SUP (including factors like hygiene, product safety, essentiality, social impact and economic impact).

2) The adverse impact of the SUP on the environment (including factors like collectability, recyclability, possibility of end-of-life solutions, environmental impact of alternate materials and littering propensity).

Exclusion of multi-layered packaging (MLP) is indeed a shortcoming as 95 per cent of single-use plastics is reported to belong to this category. MLPs have high littering propensity and low collectability.

In order to expand the ban to such items, the government should coordinate with corporations and find replacement for the MLPs.

Holding corporations accountable

Considering that the current ban restricts the supply of SUPs with 'low utility', the impact on corporations will be limited. Packaging materials used by Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) is still out of the ambit of the ban — a respite that shouldn't last longer.

A cursory glance at the banned items suggests that most of the entries are related, in some way or the other, to small and medium sector enterprises. If any negative fallout is to be borne in immediate terms, it will be by the MSMEs, and not the larger companies. Allaying the concerns of MSMEs should be an intrinsic part of the SUP ban otherwise the effectiveness of the ban will remain questionable.

Weeding out the plastic menace from the environment will be possible only if all the stakeholders pledge to shoulder the responsibility equitably.

Though large FMCG companies are not governed under the ban, under the Plastic Waste Management Rules, they are obliged to exercise Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR works on the simple logic that producers and managers of SUP items should take the plastics back and send it for reprocessing. In fact, annual targets have been fixed for companies on how much is to be recollected.

Contrary to the banned SUPs which use a mere 2-3 per cent of the total plastic consumed, EPR has much wider ambit as packaging comprises over 90 per cent of the plastic. If implemented properly, EPR obligations will yield great benefits. The reality, however, has taken an altogether different course.

National Green Tribunal (NGT), in its order dated January 8, 2021, noted: "Regretfully, steps taken by the MoEFCC for finalising the EPR regime are too slow. We note that the PWM Rules were framed in the year 2016 in place of 2011 Rules. There is no justification for the long delay in finalisation of EPR models even after more than four years of the publication of the Rules."

Sunita Narain, Chairman, Centre of Science and Environment, specifically pointed out certain limitations of the EPR regime, saying that it "sounds good on paper, (but) there are huge problems in the way EPR has been designed or is being implemented. For instance, there is no information on the quantity of the plastic material or the waste the company generates. Not only is it based on self-declaration, but there is nothing available in the public domain to assess its accuracy".

Being in a capacity that allows for a moderation opportunity, the government can play a levellers' role by ensuring all the stakeholders stick to their responsibility in order to maintain the element of sustainability in the fight against plastic.

The adverse side of ban

It must be cleared at the outset itself that no amount of adversity should deter us from going for a plastic ban but, at the same time, it needs to be ensured that adversities are avoided to the best possible extent.

According to the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the plastic industry in India employs 1.6 million people. As India has taken its first step forward towards eliminating a subset of plastic, it should parallelly initiate a long-term strategy to ensure that life and livelihood of these people are not affected with future extension of the ban.

The rag-pickers, including children, are engaged in the most contemptuous and risky job. While putting their hands inside the heaps of garbage, they are never sure what their hands will be exposed to in a while.

They need to be identified with an id card of their own. The work they do needs to be mechanised to ensure both safety and speed. The governments need to educate and aptly incentivise these workers for the work they have been doing.

It is important to remember that thus far India has banned a minuscule proportion of plastics, rest will continue to be littered in the environment for a long time to come. Initiating a ban doesn't free us from the crucial task of re-cycling. Essentially, recycling infrastructure will have to be ramped up, and the workforce needs to be equipped and trained sooner than later.

Finding substitutes

If not plastic, then what? Cups, plates, forks and even straws have become indispensable parts of our lives. They need to stay — whether they are made of plastic or anything else.

Substituting plastics will come at its own cost. Not just corporations will have to explore, and pay for, alternative raw materials like paper, they may also have to re-structure their production facilities. Given that ample headroom was provided by the government before implementing the ban, the lack of preparedness on the part of companies is a clear case of ignorance. In order to smoothly transition from plastic to non-plastic regime, companies should be nudged from now on to start re-configuring their plastic use.

It will, however, be inappropriate to limit the discourse to economic costs of plastic ban. In fact, the cost incurred on implementing the ban can easily be offset with the environmental advantages accruing from the ban.

The real conundrum will be to nail down the alternatives. If, in place of plastic, variants of paper come into dominant use in future, they will have their own set of implications. Increased use of paper products may lead to widespread deforestation. Taking another instance, if plastic cups at tea stalls are replaced dominantly with earthen cups, this may lead to irreparably deploring the topsoil. Of course, there are alternatives in the form of non-disposable steel and glass cups, but where is the clarity on which to use, at what scale?

If an attempt is made towards curtailing plastic use in society, it should be duly accompanied by an effort to find suitable alternatives. This effort should be based on scientific research and findings, and not left on the discretion of individual units.

Views expressed are personal