Like California, India starts phasing out single-use plastic
India banned some single-use or disposable plastic products Friday as part of a federal plan to phase out the ubiquitous material in the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people.
For the first stage, it has identified 19 plastic items that aren’t very useful but have a high potential to become litter,. The new law makes it illegal to produce, import, stock, distribute or sell items such as plastic cups, straws and ice cream sticks. Some disposable plastic bags will also be phased out and replaced with thicker ones.
Thousands of other plastic products, such as water bottles and potato-chip bags, aren’t covered by the ban. But the Indian government has set targets for manufacturers to recycle or dispose of them after their use.
Plastic manufacturers had appealed to the government to delay the ban, citing inflation and potential job losses. But India’s environment minister, Bhupender Yadav, said at a news briefing in New Delhi that the ban had been in the pipeline for a year.
“Now that time is up,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that India has considered a plastic ban. But previous iterations have focused on specific regions, with varying degrees of success. A nationwide ban that includes not just the use of plastic but also its production or importation was a “definite boost,” said Satyarupa Shekhar, the Asia-Pacific coordinator of the advocacy group Break Free from Plastic.
The legislation heads off what would be a costly and contentious ballot measure and pushes California ahead of the world in the fight against plastic waste.
Most plastic isn’t recycled globally, and millions of tons pollute the world’s oceans, affect wildlife and turn up in drinking water. Scientists are still trying to assess the risks posed by the tiny bits of broken-down plastic, known as microplastics. In 2020, more than 4.5 million tons of plastic waste was generated in India, according to the country’s federal pollution watchdog.
The creaky waste-management system in India’s burgeoning cities and villages means that much of this waste isn’t recycled and ends up polluting the environment. Nearly 14 million tons of plastic waste was either littered or not recycled by the South Asian nation in 2019 — the highest in the world, according to Our World in Data.
Making plastic releases planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and India is home to factories that make more than 268,000 tons of disposable plastic each year. This means that reducing the manufacture and consequent waste of plastic is crucial for India to meet its target of reducing emissions from economic activity by 45% in eight years.
Although the new partial ban is a step in the right direction, Shekhar criticized it as inadequate.
A report reveals the illicit trade sending plastic waste from rich countries to poor ones. California scraps made up nearly a third of U.S. exports.
“Given the magnitude of the plastic crisis, this is too little. And it’s too little both in its scope as well as the coverage,” said Shekhar.
Ravi Agarwal, the director of Toxics Link, a New Delhi-based advocacy group that focuses on waste management, said that the ban was “a good beginning” but that its success would depend on how well it is enforced by states and municipalities.
Indian officials said the banned items were identified with the availability of alternatives in mind, such as bamboo spoons, plantain trays and wooden ice-cream sticks. But in the days leading up to the ban, many vendors professed confusion.
Moti Rahman, 40, is a vegetable vendor in New Delhi. Customers at his cart carefully picked out fresh summer produce Tuesday before he tipped them into a plastic bag.
Rahman said he agrees with the ban but added that if plastic bags are stopped without a readily available and equally cost-effective replacement, his business will be negatively affected.
“After all, plastic is used in everything,” he said.
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