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Plastic Waste Management
The Supreme Court has flagged the "complete failure" of agencies in implementing the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 in the national capital and directed the chief secretary of the Delhi government to call a meeting of all stakeholders to discuss the issue. The apex court observed it is a matter of immense importance that the 2016 Rules are implemented in their true letter and spirit in the capital city. "If we find that all other authorities do not come together and tell us the time-bound schedule for implementation of the 2016 Rules, the court may have to consider of passing harsh orders," a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih said in its order passed on November 11. The bench said, "We direct the chief secretary of the Delhi Government to call a meeting of all the stakeholders, including the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, to discuss the issue of implementation of the 2016 Rules". It said all stakeholders must come together and file a common report before
India leads the world in generating plastic waste, producing 10.2 million tonnes a year, far more than double the next big-polluting nations, according to a new study. According to researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK, the world creates 57 million tonnes of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people's bodies. The study also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South. It's enough pollution each year to fill New York City's Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday's journal Nature. The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15 per cent of the world's population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the ...
Plastic is not a 100 per cent biodegradable product and if any manufacturers claim otherwise it will tantamount to misleading advertisement, a top BIS official said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has suggested the Environment Ministry not to certify biodegradability of plastics as it has not been established and research are still going on in India and other countries. It would be a fit case of "misleading advertisement" if any manufacturers claims that its plastic products are 100 per cent biodegradable, he added. "It has not been established whether the plastic is actually 100 per cent biodegradable. Research is still going on on this subject in India and across the world," BIS Director General Pramod Kumar Tiwari told reporters. Although, there are a few test methods and standards but none of them confirm that plastic is biodegradable, he said. Further, Tiwari said the same was conveyed to the officials of the Environment Ministry in a recent ...