Plastic Pollution

Case Studies:

• NGT fines Delhi Government ( Rs. 25 crores ) for plastic farms in the outskirts of the city. Repeated plastic fires out broke contaminating the atmosphere.
• Solution : These workers should be adequately skilled in training institutes and then employed.
• Plastic waste management : Innovative initiative to exchange plastic waste for a meal at Bhopal.

India’s efforts to beat plastic pollution:

• More than 20 States and Union Territories have joined the fight to beat the plastic pollution, announcing a ban on single-use plastics such as carry bags, cups, plates, cutlery, straws and thermocol products.
• India has also won global acclaim for its “Beat Plastic Pollution” resolve declared on World Environment Day last year, under which it pledged to eliminate single-use plastic by 2022.
• All such efforts have yielded positive results: Voluntary initiatives are having an impact in many States, as citizens reduce, reuse and sort their waste.

Gaps existing:

• Waste plastic from packaging of everything from food, cosmetics and groceries to goods delivered by online platforms remains unaddressed.
• Collect-back system: The Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 are clear that producers, importers and brand owners must adopt a collect-back system for the plastic they introduce into the environment. However, not much has been done to take the process forward.
• Extended Producer Responsibility clause: Small producers of plastics are facing the ban, while more organized entities covered by the Extended Producer Responsibility clause continue with business as usual. 

Impact of Plastic Pollution

• Environmental Pollution: According to a 2014 toxics link study on plastic waste, it contributed directly to

ground, air and water pollution.

• Soil Pollution: Toxic chemicals leach out of plastic through landfill site, is linked to decreasing crop productivity, impacting food security, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption and other ailments.
• Poisoning Ocean: Every year, up to 13 million tons of plastic leak into our oceans, where it smothers  coral reefs and threatens vulnerable marine wildlife. The plastic that ends up in the oceans can circle the Earth four times in a single year, and it can persist for up to 1,000 years before it fully disintegrates.
• Air Pollution: Disposing of plastic waste by burning it in open-air pits releases harmful gases like furan and dioxin.

• Health Impact: Plastic bags often provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes and pests thus increase the transmission of vector-borne diseases like malaria.
• Bioaccumulation: Plastic bags are often ingested by animals who mistakenly taken them for food due to which toxic chemicals entered the human food chain.
• Financial Loss: The total economic damage to the world’s marine ecosystem caused by plastic amounts to at least $13 billion every year.
• Exuberating Natural Disaster: Encroachment and clogging of city drainage with plastic and solid waste often leads to suburban flooding. For example, Mumbai’s experience of annual flooding like situation during monsoon season due to water clogging etc.
• Social Cost: The social damage continuously being inflicted is inestimable as every sphere of life get affected by it like tourism, recreation, business, the health of humans, animals, fish and birds.

Challenges in addressing Plastic Pollution

•  Not prioritized by the state authorities: Waste management is the last in the list of priorities of municipal corporations. Many States/UTs have not constituted State Level Monitoring Committee (SLMC) Body to monitor implementation of PWM Rules.
• Lack of expertise: among the state pollution control boards and the dearth of understanding of the scale of the plastic waste challenge.
• Presence of a communication gap between the state and central government officials.
• Poor response of companies/ producers: which are mandated to set up systems either individually or collectively in cities to ensure the collection of non-recyclable waste. They are supposed to submit their plans to states, which has been founding lacking till now.
• Lack of accurate data: Only 14 of India’s 35 state pollution control boards filed information on plastic waste generation in 2017-18, as per CPCB. The states have been unable to gather real-time data on its generation.
• Large-scale presence of informal sector– Over 90 percent of the plastic industry is informal, thus trying to reach and work with these manufacturers becomes a challenge. It is further compounded due to presence of illegal units.
• Ubiquitous Trans boundary Movement of marine plastics and micro plastics: It is becoming a major concern as their property of durability makes their debris remain intact for long period of time throughout the ocean.
• Ineffective Waste Collection: Greatest burden of plastic waste entering the sea is likely to arise where waste collection systems are ineffective or even non-existent.
• Lack of resources with less developed countries: Less developed and developing countries in particular may face challenges in managing the rapidly growing volume of plastic waste.

Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 (as amended in 2018)

• Defines minimum thickness of plastic carry bags i.e. 50 microns. This would increase the cost and the tendency to provide free carry bags would come down.
• Responsibility of different stakeholders:
  • Local Bodies– Gram Sabha will implement in rural areas.
  • Producers and Brand owners– have extended producer responsibility.
  • Waste Generator– shall segregate and store their waste as per Solid Waste Management Rules, and handover segregated wastes to authorized waste disposal facilities.
  • Street Vendor– Not to provide such carry bags or fine would be imposed. Only the registered shopkeepers on payment of a registration fee to local bodies would be allowed to give out plastic carry bags on charge.
  • Producers– are to keep a record of their vendors to whom they have supplied raw materials for manufacturing.
• Promote the use of plastic for road construction or energy recovery.
• A Central Registration System for the registration of the producer/importer/ owner.
• Phasing out of Multi-layered Plastic (MLP) is applicable only to MLP that are “non-recyclable or non-energy recoverable or have no alternate use”.

Other Steps taken for tackling Plastic Debris

• Blue Flag Beach Certificate Standards
  • Certificate is given to environment-friendly and clean beaches, equipped with amenities of international standards for tourists. These standards were established by the Copenhagen-based Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) in 1985.
  • Chandrabhaga beach on the Konark coast of Odisha is the first in Asia to get the Blue Flag certification.
• UN Environment launches #CleanSeas campaign: Its objective is to eliminate major sources of marine litter, Microplastics in cosmetics and the excessive, wasteful usage of single-use plastic by the year 2022.
• Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal: It aims at preventing and minimizing the generation of wastes including those ending up in the ocean. Much of the marine liter and microplastics found in the sea may be determined as ‘waste’ as defined under the Convention.
• Stockholm Convention on POPs: It aims to protect human health and the environment from POPs (organic chemicals that persist in the environment, bio accumulate in humans and wildlife, have harmful effects and have the potential for long-range environmental transport). Plastics can adsorb POPs such as PCB, DDT and dioxins and these are frequently detected in marine plastic liter.
• The Honolulu Strategy: It is a framework for a comprehensive and global collaborative effort to reduce the ecological, human health, and economic impacts of marine debris worldwide.
• G20 Implementation Framework for Actions on Marine Plastics Litter is aimed at facilitating further concrete action on marine waste, though on a voluntary basis, after the G20 Hamburg Summit in Germany adopted the “G20 action plan on marine litter” in 2017.

Way forward:

• The Centre and state should conduct awareness programmes and capacity building exercises to educate state-level officials to carry out necessary measures to segregate plastic and dispose it.
• To manage plastic waste, it is imperative for states to devise plans based on real-time targets and have companies and plastic manufacturers on in the loop.
• The informal sector needs to be given proper recognition, including adequate space, access to waste, storage and recognized plastic collection centres. States should plan to incentivize the informal sector to

collect single-use plastic and other plastics which have low or no value, so that they get properly

disposed of.

• For use of alternatives to plastics, consumer awareness campaigns need to be devised. Further, the alternatives should be made available at lower prices for consumers to move away from plastics. For this, alternative industries should be promoted so as to reduce their prices.
• A multi-stakeholder action plan should be put in place by the states to consider reduction, focus on low value or no value of plastics and include the informal sector, enabling them to become entrepreneurs. The State Urban Development Authorities should incorporate PWM Rules, 2016 in Municipal Byelaws for its effective implementation.