Unpacking the Plastic Problem: India’s Approach to Single-Use Plastic

The Plastic Waste Management Rules (Amendment) 2024 introduces, “Guidelines on Extended Producer Responsibility for Plastic Packaging” Here are some key takeaways from these guidelines.

1. Micro and small enterprises that produce plastic packaging will be exempt from EPR guidelines. The EPR for these enterprises will be covered by entities that have supplied the plastic raw material.
2.  Includes BO of online platforms and companies engaged in plastic waste processing.
3. Guidelines will require all entities covered to register in an online platform.
4. Guidelines set up a plan of a minimum level of recycling for manufacturers or importers of plastic raw materials.
5. The guidelines set up an online trading platform for EPR certificates.
6. These certificates will function like credits, allowing producers to either collect the waste they produce or purchase its equivalent from entities who have exceeded their targets.

A similar “Green Credits” program was also recently introduced, focusing on generating green credits through environmentally beneficial acts and subsequently trading those green credits. The prospect of a tradable compliance token in the form of EPR certificates seems like a misguided step at best. It is reminiscent of “carbon credits”. This is alarming because carbon credits are notorious for being very difficult to regulate, verify, and trust. They allowed corporations to buy carbon credits and not take any steps to reduce their carbon emissions and sometimes even increase their carbon emissions.

EPR certificates may seem like a clever solution to a complicated problem to some. However the problems with EPR certificates and green credits will very likely be similar to those of carbon credits.

1. The Amendment does not strictly regulate the Extended Producer’s Responsibility process and pushes the responsibility of verification to the SPCBs and the CPCB.
2. It does not make strict criteria to award EPR certificates to entities in the first place. It proposes a ‘deposit return’ or ‘buy back’ model to fulfill the EPR obligation but does not elaborate.
3. Similar to Carbon credits the EPR certificate system is ripe for abuse by massive corporations
4. Even if the EPR certificate system works perfectly. It will place more burden on some local bodies than others.

The figure problem with the latest amendments to the plastic waste management rules is that it continuous to Continues to pursue the flower approach of recycling and poorly researched plastic alternatives.

The Local Body

Among other Irreplaceable functions, the Plastic Waste Management Rules and its Amendments place the following Responsibilities on local bodies.

1. Development and setting up of infrastructure for segregation, collection, storage, transportation, processing and disposal of the plastic waste either on its own or by engaging agencies or producers.

2. Ensuring segregation, collection, storage, transportation, processing and disposal of plastic waste; 

3. Ensuring that no damage is caused to the environment during this process;

4. Ensuring channelization of recyclable plastic waste fraction to recyclers;

5. Ensuring processing and disposal on non-recyclable fraction of plastic waste according to the guidelines issued by the Central Pollution Control Board;

6. Creating awareness among all stakeholders and engaging civil societies or groups working with waste pickers.

The amendment places the responsibility of collecting some key pieces of data on local bodies, namely

1. Plastic waste generated, including plastic waste existing at dump sites, in a year; 
2. Plastic waste management infrastructure available for collection, segregation, processing;
3. Projection of plastic waste to be generated;
4. Status on framing and implementation on byelaws;
5. Actions taken to prevent stocking, distribution, sale and usage of banned single-use plastic items.
6. Urban local body and Panchayat at District Level shall prepare and submit online an annual report in Form –V to the Urban Development Department and to Rural Development Department, respectively, and also to the State Pollution Control Board or Pollution Control Committee concerned by the 30th June every year.

Most of these functions are also expected to be performed by gram panchayats. local bodies are overburdened by the logistical demands of collecting all this data on top of the responsibility of segregation, collection, storage, transportation, processing, and disposal of plastic waste. These bodies often lack the technical expertise necessary for proper waste management. As a result, they may resort to illegal and unethical practices, leading to human rights violations and significant environmental damage.

The current violations of law and human rights also highlight the inadequate regulation of local bodies by State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), which themselves suffer from insouciant oversight by design.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is intended as a policy tool to hold producers accountable, but in practice, it often implies liability without effectively enforcing it.

Governance

The State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) is seemingly the answer to all of these questions. Which brings us to the reason why it’s actually not.

The SPCBs hold a lot of discretionary power over decisions that don’t necessarily need discretionary decision making. The questions of responsibility, chain of command, disciplinary measures, testing, criteria for testing etc could have been added to the numerous amendments to the draft. Decisions made by the boards or lack thereof have been questioned countless times by activists and government bodies alike.

As per a CSE research, merely 12 states provide an annual update. 5 states provide their industrial/non-industrial status and compliance. 5 provide minutes of meetings, 5 provide inspection results, and 9 provide annual public hearing results. Nothing is reported by many of the SPCBs to begin with. Over the last twenty years, the mandate and daily functioning give the SPCBs the responsibility to add in supplementation. Yet Boards continue to ignore even the barest of requirements.

The State Pollution Control Board

A working paper from the Centre for Policy Research analyzing the institutional issues of the State Boards notes some of these issues in a select number of assessed reports. Some of the reports assessing this issue are as follows. A lot of the State Boards from where the evaluation of reports submitted comes are on an incremental spend. A large part of the spend is on investments through FD and RCD and not on buildings, tangible infrastructure, or even research projects. This is because the State Boards never get a line item budget from state governments, and almost no or very little line item budgeting comes through efforts of the central government. Yet, the outcome of the spends comes through a sporadic effort of alignment.

The issue with the boards from this perspective is that they only deal with personnel matters and fail to acknowledge a promised changing trend. An overabundance of governmental and industrial representatives on these boards decreases the public equity of access to air quality issues and resolutions. However, it’s an issue to identify who has the conflict of interest—and air quality is not a controlled field with obligatory oversight. There is no controlled field of professional authority—there are literally few and far between air quality professionals who spend minuscule time addressing pollution mitigation outside the quasi-hearings required by the consent process. Thus, this ironically increases the likelihood that the SPCB will produce better air quality compounded by the oversight and personnel issues on the boards.

But where CPR’s report relates to air quality, the nonexistence of air quality professionals in the academic setting translates to plastic waste management for the CSE report. A national and state pollution control board with essentially non-essential personnel and an advisory nature that merely suggests but does not compel at the national and state level is bound to collapse. For example, the chairman and members of the SPCBs are predominantly civil servants who do not possess a graduate degree in environmental studies; thus, they are distanced from the issues connected to the problems they seek to resolve with their pollution and climate change mitigation efforts. Furthermore, over 50% of the members of the ten SPCBs and PCCs analyzed are the potential polluters themselves—municipalities, industries, and public sector undertakings.

Analysis

On August 12, 2021, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) announced through the Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules, 2021, a ban on certain single-use plastics ‒ 19 types were included. These plastics were chosen based on a report by an expert group from the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals (DCPC).

Focusing on this: eorts to stop plastic pollution show a clear issue. Government actions should prevent and stop plastic production right where it starts ‒ policies should not just be about cleaning up. Unluckily, India’s system for handling plastic waste keeps following this flawed path. India creates 5.5 million tonnes of single-use plastic waste every year and from this amount, reliance industries were responsible for 3 million tonnes.

While looking at the plastic waste management system (definitions, responsibility and governance), experts see them as distinct parts to spot issues in policy and stages of the process. These three elements need to work together for the system to give good results. If definitions have mistakes, tasks and accountability will be wrongly assigned. A governance system with wrong task assignments won’t work well, even if it’s running at full power. So, if the governance system is slow or ignores the rules, the desired results won’t happen ‒ like reducing and eventually stopping plastic waste creation. The problems in methods and how they are carried out in each of these areas are shown in the findings.

When plans at the highest level in the plastic waste system (how things are defined and who is in charge) get it wrong, even a really good setup down the line won’t work well.

One important part of this plan: the system’s “goals”. Section 2(a) talks about this in the paragraph called “revised goals” ‒ the plastic waste and management act from 2016 set tough but admirable goals to stop using MLPs within two years. Later changes weakened this goal ‒ adding unclear terms like “alternative use” and “energy recoverable” to slowly leave out many MLPs from the phase-out. The plastics exempt from being phased out need not have an established system of ‘alternate use’ or ‘energy recovery’ even if there is a robust analysis of this alternate system in terms of its effectiveness in mitigating the established harmful effects on the environment need not be be performed. If it is ensured that there is an alternate system already in place that can readily dispose of these plastics in the manner prescribed, there ought to be a cost to benefit ratio analysis of this system to determine if it is actually better to categorize these plastics as exempt from being phased out or phasing them out entirely. The problem lies in the fact that the harmful MLPs were exempt without mandating these prerequisites. Without an alternate system in place, the responsibility of disposing these exempt MLPs will fall on the existing disposal system which is excessively strained already.

The introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) guidelines appears progressive on the surface but falters in practice. The mechanism of tradable EPR certificates, mirroring carbon credit systems, has proven globally to be ripe for exploitation.

These systems enable corporations to bypass meaningful reductions in waste generation by purchasing compliance rather than implementing sustainable practices. For instance, the lack of stringent criteria and reactive monitoring mechanisms in India’s EPR framework allows major producers to accountability to smaller actors or local authorities, undermining the policy’s foundational intent.Additionally, the governance landscape, particularly the role of State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), is plagued by systemic inadequacies. These boards, conceived as custodians of environmental protection, are often incapacitated by chronic understanding, outdated infrastructure, and conflicts of interest. This institutional inertia is further exacerbated by the dominance of corporate and government representatives who may prioritize industrial growth over ecological sustainability.

Globally, best practices emphasize independent environmental governance with adequate representation from civil society and academia—India’s SPCBs fall significantly short of this standard.

Moreover, the amendments’ focus on downstream waste management rather than upstream production control reflects a broader misalignment in policy priorities.

Plastic production in India continues to surge, with corporations like Reliance Industries accounting for a significant share of single-use plastic waste. Without addressing the root cause—excessive production—the plastic waste management system relegates itself to being a reactive, damage-control measure. International comparisons, such as the EU’s stringent plastic reduction targets and bans on single-use plastics, underscore the inadequacies of India’s approach.

Finally, the categorization and treatment of biodegradable plastics raise significant concerns. The amendments’ relaxed definitions and exemptions, unbacked by scientific consensus, risk perpetuating misconceptions about the environmental impact of so-called “bioplastics.” Research, including studies from the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, has consistently highlighted the unintended consequences of bioplastic production, such as higher pollutant outputs during manufacturing and infrastructure gaps in disposal systems.

Conclusion

India’s approach to tackling plastic pollution is a warning sign. Cities show how quick fixes don’t match up to lasting solutions. Instead of setting lofty targets or finding shortcuts to follow rules, these ideas remain just ideas. India needs to rethink how it deals with plastic pollution. First: plastic rules should separate from waste, focusing on production. There should be clear limits on single-use plastic, with rewards for those inventing new packaging and penalties for those ignoring environmental and social responsibilities. Second: authorities like SPCBs must undergo widespread changes, allowing them to function independently with skilled people working for the common good, not personal power. By looking at the EU Plastic Strategy, India can learn from others advancement; thus, leaving India’s management of such policies as it exploits what’s easiest and best for industrial complexes without using worst-case scenario assessments to cripple India in the long run. A complete overhaul is not only feasible but in India’s best interests moving forward.