Draft Plastics Waste Management Rules: Too little, too late

The government recently released the “Draft Plastics Waste Management Rules, 2015”. It is once again a case of not just too little too late, but also it does not present a solution to tackle the growing menace of waste with increasing urbanisation and economic upliftment of people.
 
No developed country in the world has banned plastics bags. They are very often encouraged. Way back in 1995, California used to charge for paper bags and give plastics bags (thinner than 50 microns – perhaps not more than 20 microns) free. It perhaps still does. Why? The wise men realised that paper is a more drain on resources – more trees, more water. A forest can be cut down in a day, but takes half a century to grow. And no factories in the world can generate a clean environment with water to drink and air to breathe other than forests for the world’s population.
 
Germany and Japan have very strict regulations on the producer. The responsibility on the producer to take back packaging and recycle is enormous. The draft rules do lay down the responsibility of the urban local bodies, the producer, the retailer and the waste generator, ie the consumer. Interestingly it puts a time limit on the producers only. Why have the other stakeholders been spared? However, the solution simply lies on putting a time limit on the urban local bodies – and a time limit of no more than 6 months – to set up a waste recycling and processing facility. It is sad to see Millennium Cities like Gurgaon become a garbage dump yard.
 
Solutions exist! We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We need to, on a war footing, outsource the waste collection and recycling to established and large private players. Let the government do what it does best – govern! It needs to ensure that the private players do their work well.
 
Banning will never be a solution. The solution has to come with strict enforcement by an agency to see that the urban local bodies, who have failed miserably in the last 65 years, begin to act. Perhaps a degree of centralisation is called. If the urban local bodies have failed, which they have, let the state of the centre take over. Money and resources are not a problem for the country. Execution is. Leadership is. Needless to say, multinationals and the Indian industry have also not fulfilled their responsibilities. They have taken undue advantage of the lax implementation of laws in India.
 
The draft rules interestingly require that all packaging bags be paid for by the consumer. This is a step in the right direction. Nothing comes for free. However, the onus of the retailer to deposit this money with the government is ridiculous. This is more red tapism. The manufacturer can be charged a cess on their sales instead. This can be distributed in the right proportion to the waste recycler who sets it up.
 
The rules go on to further increase the packaging thickness to 50 microns to make it attractive for the rag picker to collect. We have to move away collection from rag pickers. When a 20 micron plastic bag is sufficient, why waste money on 50 microns? You are simply doubling the consumption of polymers for a plastics bag that is going to be discarded. If the system to collect waste is corrected, we can go to 10 microns instead.
 
To quote Dr Mashelkar, India needs more from less to meet the demands of the growing population. I am not denying the role rag pickers play today, but does the government not want to alleviate them from this job? They are mostly children – don’t they need to go to schools instead?
 
What the government needs to also recognise is that technologies are available to recycle multilayered packaging like tetrapak, multi-layer films, metallised films and even plain vanilla films. Container loads of tetrapak waste are imported into India for recycling. Indigenous additives are available to recycle these multi layer wastes and bring the properties of the recycled plastics to virgin levels. If you ban multilayer films, you are going back to the stoneage. You will start using tin and glass. Has anyone cared to think the kind of energy required to process either of these? The temperatures at which these materials are processed? For glass it is as high as a 1000°C. We will have skyrocketing energy bills furthering global warming.
 
India has the technology to recycle and there are players who are more than willing to setup recycling. Incentivise them instead to take up collection and segregation. Encourage self help groups in villages and tier 2 and 3 cities to set up centres. Make collection and recycling a respectable profession. Increase wages of cleaners drastically. Enable them lead a life with dignity. That will change the wayside scene in India – one where we don’t see garbage but instead clean walkways. No amount of banning on plastics bags will serve any purpose. All this will do, is lead to littering of paper and cloth bags. Or simply garbage on the roadside without the bags.

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Samit Jain is the managing director of Pluss Polymers Pvt Ltd