Landfills are representative of our misplaced development priorities.
Photographer: Jonathan Torgovnik/AJWS | Organisation: SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha.
“Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution”. The movement was started in 2011 by “Rebecca Prince-Ruiz (the founder of the Plastic Free Foundation) and a small team in local government in Western Australia, and is now one of the most influential environmental campaigns in the world.” This excerpt from the Plastic Free July website shows that globally, people acknowledge the plastic crisis as well as want to be part of the solution. And why not, as the age we live in is being called the plasticene1 and plastic pollution has become all pervasive. Plastic is found on top of the highest mountains2, deepest of trenches in the ocean3, while plastic (microplastic and nano plastic) has been found even inside human placenta4, blood5, lungs6 and testicles7. Scientists have discovered that micro- and nanoplastics exist in every environmental compartment — from freshwater to soil and air — and in thousands of species, including humans8. A 2019 WWF report suggests that we consume an average of 5g or a debit card size of plastic a week. Toxics Link in 2024, found microplastic in all 10 samples of salt and 5 samples of sugar they studied in the Indian market. Similar studies in the past have shown tap water, bottled water and other food and beverages to contain microplastic. Microplastic has become part of our daily food and drinks.
There is mounting evidence of plastic and its additives are endocrine disruptors, cancer producing, contributing to hormonal disbalance, weight gain, infertility9 as well as increased risk to heart attack10. “Chemicals in Plastics: A Technical Report” UNEP 2023 states that “more than 13,000 chemicals have been identified as associated with plastics and plastic production across a wide range of applications. Ten groups of chemicals (based on chemistry, uses, or sources) are identified as being of major concern due to their high toxicity and potential to migrate or be released from plastics”. This number has been updated to over 16000 chemicals in plastic11. The impacts of plastic on biodiversity, water, air and soil health is also well documented that threatens the well-being of all.
In the face of such terrifying facts of plastic pollution that would cripple individuals to the depths of despair, “Plastic Free July provides resources and ideas to help you reduce single-use plastic waste everyday at home, work, school and even at your local cafe”. This call to personal action gives hope and agency to “100+ million participants in 190 countries that have joined hands in the movement”. It celebrates individual action to “refuse single-use plastics in July and beyond” and making it a lifestyle choice to have a smaller plastic footprint. It also enables participants to “find alternatives that become everyday habits” that define the person and strengthen community actions to reduce plastic pollution by stopping the use of single-use plastic.
Single-use plastic (SUP) epitomises the wasteful consumerist lifestyle that we have evolved into and Plastic Free July calls on us to be part of the solution by being mindful of our consumption patterns and shift from a throwaway culture to a reuse, refill and repair culture by opting for reusable cloth bags, water bottles, utensils, cutlery, menstrual products, diapers, shampoo bars, buying packaging-free, etc.
“Reduce” and “Refuse” are two key words that the movement calls on participants and this is an important narrative to redress the plastic waste crisis. Plastic waste is a production issue as well as a design flaw. The paper, “Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made” highlighted this issue when they reported that “8300 million metric tons (Mt) of virgin plastics have been produced till 2017. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, only around 9% of which was recycled, 12% incinerated, and 79% had accumulated in landfills or the natural environment.”12 The fact that only 9% of all plastic produced has been recycled busted the myth of plastic recycling as the panacea of plastic pollution by bringing forth the reality of the limits to recycling. In reality, most plastics are transported across large distances even beyond national boundaries and downcycled, burnt or dumped in open landfills. What is important to note is that many types of plastics like multilayered plastics, PVC, styrofoam, etc are non-recyclable. To top it all, “Half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once — and then thrown away”. (UNEP 2018)13 The finite resources of the world cannot sustain a plastic production system where “Half of the plastic ever manufactured has been produced in the past 15 years.” (World Bank 2018)14 “In 2017, packaging production constituted the highest-demanded use of plastic, with 146 million metric tons used”15.
Thus at the individual and community level, reducing and refusing the use of plastic are powerful solutions that shift the narrative from recycling and end of life waste management issue to an individual lifestyle choice to not produce waste. Detox from plastic as well as shifting into alternatives enables the exploration of intersections of plastic waste from the lens of local and unpackaged food markets and systems, composting and growing your own food and saying no to plastic packaged and ultra processed foods, DIYs (do it yourself) and repair initiatives, sustainable menstrual products and slow fashion and most importantly creating communities of practitioners. This is perfectly summed up by Anne Marie Bonneau, “We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly”.
Every individual's action through the Plastic Free July makes an important contribution to reducing plastic pollution. Over the last 5 years, Plastic Free July participants have collectively avoided 10 billion kgs of waste, including 1.4 billion kgs of plastic. The campaign has inspired 223 million behaviour changes and 87% of participants make changes that become habits, setting a benchmark for behaviour change best practice. An average reduction of 18 kg in waste and recycling per person per year has been achieved, meaning an incredible 4.1% decrease in waste generation.
But, there is an additional impact that the movement brings about which is the contribution to the change in narrative of waste, enabling people to veer away from viewing plastic waste as only something to be managed to something to be reduced. Awareness on the intersections with the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, food systems and menstrual health is also generated. It brings to focus that plastic pollution is a production issue with its root in “Big Oil”. The movement brings in solidarities that enable the demand for solutions to be systemic which then goes beyond citizens’ actions. It calls for a lens of a complete lifespan of a product and not just when it is labelled waste.
The Great Indian Waste Crisis.
Photographer: Jonathan Torgovnik/AJWS | Organisation: SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha.
Plastic Free July has great relevance in India, and the country has shown active participation in the movement. Plastic pollution is an everyday lived experience in India and has reached every nook and corner of the nation. India is among 12 nations responsible for 60% of mismanaged plastic waste globally, even though the fast-developing South Asian nation's per capita plastic waste production is among the lowest in the world as per the Plastic Overshoot Day report by Swiss non-profit EA Earth Action. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s country-wise plastic data revealed that India mismanages 85 per cent of its plastic waste.
But mismanagement is just one of the challenges that we face in India, as we do have a production issue too. The Problem of Plastics, states that “Plastics production in India has surged over the past 50 years – from 15 million tonnes (MT) in 1964 to 311 MT in 2014 – and is expected to double again over the next 20 years. The growth rate of the Indian plastics industry is one of the highest in the world: plastics consumption is growing at 16 per cent per annum in the country (compared to 10 per cent annually in China and around 2.5 per cent annually in the UK). India’s annual demand for plastic packaging stands at 20 MMT – out of this, 15 MMT is met by virgin plastics and 5 MMT from recycled plastic materials. It has also been estimated that 45 per cent of the 20 MMT – nearly 9.6 MMT – is consumed immediately and released as waste into the environment and surroundings.” This fast change in production is corroborated by the CSE Report The Plastic Life-Cycle 2022 that highlights “India consumed 18.45 million metric tonne (MMT) of plastic in the year 2018-19; 59 percent of this went into packaging. This means that of all the petrochemicals produced in the country (29.1 MMT), more than 37 per cent was used to manufacture plastics for packaging applications."
Plastic waste is managed under the Solid Waste and Plastic Waste management rules, (2016 and 2018 respectively) in India that empowers local self governance bodies to enact bylaws including user fees, strengthen segregation at source, door to door collection, transport and treat waste including plastic waste. The rules also call on the need to undertake awareness and education programmes so that all citizens fulfil their duties towards waste management. Bulk producers have been named with niche management plans to be developed for them. The plastic waste management rules explicitly mention that it is universal in application and includes rural areas as well as event managers to take responsibility for their waste or pay for its management.
Single Use Plastic.
Photographer: Jonathan Torgovnik/AJWS | Organisation: SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha.
On 1 July 2022 India banned 19 single use plastics items through a notification by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) vide the Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules, 2021. The notification also defined single use plastic to be “plastic item intended to be used once for the same purpose before being disposed of or recycled.” This oversimplified definition does not distinguish between necessary and unnecessary plastics or between recyclable and non-recyclable plastics. The list of banned items had been created using the utility index and environmental impact and the 19 listed banned items had least utility and very high environmental impact. But some items that are low on utility index and high on environmental impact have not been considered for phasing out, e.g. plastic utensils like cups, forks spoons, knives, plates, straws, earbuds, flags etc . On close inspection of the notification the ban has severe limitations as it allows 120 microns plus plastic bags and 75 GSM plus non-woven polypropylene bags as well as 100 microns plus PVC banners to be used thus showing the lack of teeth and intent in the notification. Even banned items like SUP cutlery, are commonly available in the market today showing the poor implementation of the ban. What is important to note is that the SUP ban covers a very small portion of plastic pollution- 2-3% of primary plastic production as stated by the assessment conducted by CSE in 2023. The ban affects small level producers of SUP and excludes all the big players and problematic plastic like multi-layered plastic that are used by FMCG companies and cannot be recycled.
Multilayered plastic in a small shop.
Photographer: Jonathan Torgovnik/AJWS | Organisation: SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) within the plastic waste management rules, is supposed to take care of the remaining single-use plastic items that is not covered by the SUP ban and comprise mostly packaging products. Most of them are actually non-recyclable, like multilayered plastic, but has been categorised as “energy recoverable” for its end of life disposal in cement kilns or waste to energy plants. EPR does not include phasing out problematic plastic waste like multilayered plastic from production even though the 2016 plastic waste management rules called for phasing them out by 2018. The key part of EPR is that it actually calls on the “producers, importers and brand owners” to take responsibility for all their plastic waste that they produce through a system of payment of credits and linkage to waste management agencies, local bodies and pollution control boards. The principle of this rule is an important step in the change in narrative where producers of plastic waste are held responsible, and is a major shift that goes beyond pinning responsibility on consumers alone. But the practice till date has not lived to the expectation with implementation challenges like complexity of the system, limited awareness on the part of the waste managers and inability to respond to context as there are just national targets that exclude challenging geographies like mountains. The system has also been fraught with corruption with The Hindu reporting that, “The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2023 had unearthed more than 6,00,000 fake pollution-trading certificates from audits at four plastic-recycling companies in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka.”
The plastic waste management rules, SUP Ban and EPR have great lessons learnt for India to solve the plastic pollution crisis. These policies show intent to resolve the crisis and in some instances there are just implementation gaps which could be streamlined with the passage of time. But the fundamental challenge for us in India is the tension between the vision of wanting to be global leaders in plastic production or ensuring that we become a plastic pollution free nation.
This debate has gone global when the UNEA in March 2022 resolved for an “Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop ‘the instrument,’ which is to be based on a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, including its production, design, and disposal.” Four INC sessions of the Global Plastics Treaty (GPT) have been convened and the next one is scheduled in Busan, South Korea 25 November to 1 December 2024. At the Ottawa session (INC 4) where nearly 192 member countries deliberated for a legally binding agreement to “end plastic pollution” but could not come to any consensus on cutting plastic production and have moved forward to a formal intersessional work in the next round. India has been clear about not limiting production of primary plastic polymers or virgin plastics through the GPT as well as having nationally-driven measures for problematic and avoidable plastics, including single-use plastics.
The change in narrative from a complete life span perspective of plastic is key to address the crisis we have created. All of us have a role to play in reducing our waste, saying no to single-use plastic and adopting the various alternatives that Plastic Free July calls on us to practise in our everyday lives. The change in lifestyle becomes the basis for us to demand systemic changes that solve the problem and not shift it. Our individual actions have to be institutionalised and institutional processes that ensure reduction of plastic consumption are real solutions to be promoted. Plastic waste management at the local level stands upon good practices of solid waste management thus the basic “segregation at source”, decentralised treatment and linkages have to become the norm that is practised.
Demanding and ensuring extended producer responsibility is critical as plastic pollution is a production issue. Ultimately the problematic plastics have to be designed out of the system and companies have to shoulder their responsibility.
By Roshan Rai
Development worker at DLR Prerna Darjeeling, Core team member of Zero Waste Himalaya and the Secretary of Integrated Mountain Initiative.
References:
- The Plasticene: Time and rocks - ScienceDirect
- Microplastics found near Everest’s peak, highest ever detected in the world. National Geographic Nov 2020
- Airborne plastic pollution ‘spiralling around the globe’, study finds The Guardian 2021
- Microplastics revealed in the placentas of unborn babies The Guardian 2020
- Microplastics found in human blood for first time The Guardian 2022
- Detection of microplastics in human lung tissue using μFTIR spectroscopy - L C Jenner et al 2022 Science Direct
- Microplastics found in every human testicle in study The Guardian 2024
- Breathing Plastic: The Health Impacts of Invisible Plastics in the Air CIEL March 2023
- Fact Sheet: The Plastic Threat to Human Health. Earth Day SHEET: THE PLASTIC THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTH
- Microplastics linked to heart attack, strokes and death, Scientific American March 2024
- State of the Science on Plastic Chemicals, Martin Wagner et al 2024
- Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made - Geyer R, Jambeck JR, Law KL. Sci Adv. 2017 Jul 19;3(7):e1700782. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1700782. PMID: 28776036; PMCID: PMC5517107.
- Our Planet is drowning in plastic pollution UNEP 2018
- What a waste 2.0, A global snapshot of solid waste management to 2050 The World Bank 2018
- Plastic production worldwide in 2017 by industrial sector - Statistica 2017