The long and politically tortuous journey to fight plastic menace

To fight the menace, India would do well to encourage the use of biodegradable raw material instead of petroleum products for packaging

The growing use of plastics, a small percentage of which is recycled, is causing a spasm of popular disgust across the world. Not only are there emissions of enormous quantities of greenhouse gases in the course of production of around 350 million tonnes (mt) of plastics every year, the environment suffers further serious damage as most of used plastics goes into landfill sites or is burnt or is just littered everywhere from city streets to sea shores.  

The versatility of the light but strong synthetic material made from fossil feedstock oil has created many application opportunities at low cost. In