Untangling India’s love for plastics

Ever since Leo Hendrik Baekeland invented plastics in 1907, plastics have been an incremental part of our life. We use plastics everywhere- from disposable straws to packing loaves of bread. Plastic is everywhere. Plastic is cheap, easy to manufacture, and serves the purpose well. Because plastics are synthetic they can be moulded into things natural alternatives simply can’t. So, there’s no surprise when we see plastics being huge celebrities in our lives.
Like all good things, extreme use has cons too. We are just beginning to see them after over a century of deriving extensive use cases. From ending up in our food chains in the form of microplastics to disturbing the ecology in our oceans to clogging our water bodies, we know plastics are sweet in the short term but astonishingly damaging in the future.
The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reported in 1988 about the Great Pacific garbage patch, plastic dump larger than the size of US State, Texas in the middle of the Pacific. About 1.5 million seabirds near the Great Pacific Patch have plastics in their intestines. The UN Oceanic Conference estimates that by 2050 there would be more plastic by weight in our waters than fishes. So, a question arises, what are we doing to fix this extremely severe irreversible environmental crisis?

The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi asserted plans to eliminate single-use plastics(SUPs) by 2022. Following the event, it was much anticipated that a nationwide SUP ban was coming on October 2, 2019. What came was an assertion on the plan to eliminate plastics by 2022 incidentally leaving the legislature to draw up laws to phase out single-use plastics to respective states and union territories.
The Odisha government announced a ban on SUPs on the 2nd of October 2019, exempted only for large drinking bottles and milk pouches. The states of Goa and Andra Pradesh along with a slew of central government ministries like food has followed suit. But overall, the change the prime minister wanted to have across the country is yet to be perceived.

Part of the problem is the identification of what Single-Use Plastics are. Banning all plastics immediately is not a suitable proposition so accounting for use-and-throw plastics seems a step in the right way.
According to reports from FCCI, about 43% of plastics used in India are used for packaging. A huge chunk of the problem is plastic carry bags, which are easy to make, convenient to carry, pose high reusability and most importantly are cheap. Plastic bags are super convenient too. You walk into a store without fretting about how you will carry the things you buy because you can simply issue a bag to yourself. The intent to reuse the plastics is never fulfilled because we almost never use the same plastic bags again.
The solution can be levied in the form of charging us much higher for the bags. It isn’t ideal but it could be a direction moving forward. A change in pricing for bags saw a 95 per cent reduction of demand for carry-bags in Ireland.

The Plastics Waste Management Rules 2016 steered at definite pricing for carry-bags but it was promptly omitted in an amendment in 2018.
It is important to note that close to 20 states in India have a partial to complete ban on plastics and the legislation is yet to be seen as a success.
The impact and implications for a no-conditions blanket ban on plastics would be huge. Packets of Gutka, biscuits, beer cans, bread and several other everyday use products are dependant on single-use plastics. Industry leaders indicate that the reason for not issuing a SUP ban on October 2 to be pressure from different manufacturing industries.
Calling out a ban on plastics will mean, the manufacturer will have to rethink manufacturing. The immediate effect of that will be: there will be driving up in the cost of goods — from everyday items to preservatives. Secondly, the lack of a proper alternative for plastics won’t ever lead to a successful plastic-free world. The government will need to invest in proper r&d for plastic solutions.
The status quo needs to be put down for a revision. Plastics are everywhere — in the food we eat to being the largest contributor to our waste problem. We need to implement a proper partial or complete ban on SUPs but how?
We need to start with the basics. Let’s begin with waste management.

A lot of problems can be solved if we fixed our terrible waste management skills. We need people to be aware of what SUPs are and then identifying solutions based on it. Proper segregation of waste into dry and wet waste at the municipal level or based on the micron (thickness) of the plastics could pave the way to fix our improper system. A precise set of rules for waste management need to be defined at the national level with proper incentives to use or penalising ways to make sure it is enforced.
There is also the issue of labour relocation. More than 7 crore workers are involved in an informal business of plastic management. Collection of SUPs and organised with unorganised recycling are part of many’s livelihoods. A clear plan as to how and where will this now unemployed workforce go also need to be defined.

Alternatives. Just as cheap, just as easily accessible. There are present plastic alternatives but they simply not robust enough, or easy to manufacture, or have very less mass traction.
Research in the field for the hunt for alternatives in conjugation with the aim to get mass traction for existing ones need to be achieved. Paper bags need to be at every cashier, kulhad cups need to replace every tea stalls, wooden cutlery for disposables and steel utensils when being served at parties. Small things for a big change.
These things won’t happen overnight. Social engineering for getting the attention of the mass requires to be done. People need to be educated about not littering single-use plastics. People need to be educated about waste management. Social Engineering is just as important as R&D for paper bags and wooden staws.
Stricter laws in regard to SUPs usage with banning most of them across the nation or at least all urban places. Laws pertaining to mandatory significant charge for issuing of plastic bags and forcing corporates to innovate on solutions with government assistance with the spirit of entrepreneurship should partake.

Overall there’s a lot of groundwork to do. The common people, corporates and the government have to come together to solve this terrible problem we are pacing towards. The common people need to be educated and they need to consistently be aware of their actions and consequences. Corporates need to be encouraged to find solutions for zero-SUP packaging and moving towards greener solutions. Stringent laws pertaining to SUPs, waste management in conjugation with policies to attain solutions and fix problems have to be there. All of us need to work together. Because only if we work together can we hope to fix an environment degradation of this magnitude.

