A timely wake-up call: India must urgently address plastic pollution

Last week, nearly 100 countries called for an ambitious agreement on global plastics negotiations at the third United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, held between June 9 and 13. Labelled the “Nice Wake Up Call for an Ambitious Plastics Treaty”, the initiative is an effort to address the failure of countries to reach a legally binding plastics treaty at Busan, South Korea, in December last year. This “wake-up call” makes an important shift. Having concluded that just better waste management and recycling will not work, it seeks to reduce the production and consumption of plastics and plans to convince blocking countries to reconsider red lines.

 

India did not sign on to the “wake-up call”, though Jitendra Singh, Union minister of state for science and technology and earth sciences, issued a statement advocating a legally binding treaty on global plastics. This is in keeping with India’s position at Busan. There India, one of the world’s largest plastic polluters, argued that restricting primary plastic polymer production could hinder its economic growth. The Indian plastic industry, including polymer production, is estimated to be $44 billion, employs more than four million people, and earned $11 billion from exports in 2024. Producers range from giants such as Reliance Industries to myriad medium and small enterprises. The government recently sought to boost this industry by approving 10 plastic parks.

 

This upbeat picture must be contrasted with the catastrophic environmental impact. India generates 9.3 million tonnes of plastic waste a year. Of that, 3.5 million tonnes of plastic leaks into the environment owing to mismanagement. Rising consumerism and the explosive demand for single-use and packaging plastics are likely to make the problem worse. The irony is that India has made efforts to curb plastic pollution since 2016 with the Plastic Waste Management Rules and the Extended Producer Responsibility Framework. But the gross inadequacy of the waste management and recycling infrastructure and its unorganised nature have hindered the efficacy of such laws.

 

For instance, a new regulation that took effect on April 1 requires companies to use at least 30 per cent recycled plastic in their plastic packaging. Beverage firms, big users of PET bottles, are exploring the possibility of seeking legal recourse for extending the deadline, principally because of the challenges involved in the transition. India has only five plants authorised to produce food-grade recycled plastic. Only 60 per cent of plastic waste is recycled but the bulk of this is done inefficiently in the informal sector, offering income opportunities for waste pickers and small-scale recyclers. The absence of curbs on plastic production combined with poor monitoring and inadequate incentives for eco-friendly alternatives such as bagasse-based packaging has meant that mandates to control plastic use — such as the ban on plastic bags and on plastic straws — have not worked. As much as toxic air, plastic pollution is rapidly becoming a public-health crisis — polluting drinking water, being ingested by livestock and fish, and clogging waterways and coastal areas. Biting the plastic bullet with a realistic time-bound production phaseout plan to enable the industry to handle the transition would be a good way of addressing this looming crisis.