Phasing out single-use plastics

Knowledge about the harmful impact of single-use plastics on environment and nature can be useful only when it is used in result-oriented action. Empty mineral water bottles, plastic carry bags clogging city drains, polluting rivers, wetlands, sachets of pan masala littering roads are some of the examples that regulatory measures to ban single-use plastic have failed to produce the desired result in India. Most regulatory measures initiated by different states have remained on papers which has made the target set by the Central government of phasing out single-use plastic by 2022 a daunting task. The multi-pronged strategy adopted by the Central government towards achieving the target envisages awareness generation and behavioural changes, regulatory regime for phasing out of identified single use plastic items under Plastic Waste Management (PWM) Rules, 2016, engagement with central ministries, State Governments, Local Bodies for better enforcement and wider penetration of alternatives to single use plastic items, engagement with industry and industry associations for assistance and capacity building, and strengthening of institutional mechanism for enforcement of PWM Rules. Plastic carry bag and sheets less than fifty microns in thickness used in packaging and wrapping commodities have been prohibited and there is complete ban on sachets using plastic material used for storing, packing, or selling gutkha, tobacco and pan masala under the PWM Rules. The Central government informed the parliament that the single use plastic items to be phased out by 2022 have been identified on the basis of report of the Expert Committee constituted by Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals on 'Single Use Plastic'. In 2019, the Ministry of Environment and Forests issued Standard Guidelines for Single-Use Plastic to all States and Union Territories. Some of the measures suggested in the guideline are improving segregation of waste at the source, standardising waste collection and transportation for overall waste management system. A look at the waste collection system of Guwahati city reveals actual implementation such guidelines on ground. The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) keeps appealing to the city residents to segregate biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste, but its door-to-door collection push carts come without separate bins for segregated wastes of dry, wet, and domestic hazardous waste. The segregated wastes get mixed up in the collection cart which is dumped in large waste containers or on the main roads where there are no such bins to be picked up and transported to the dumping site near Deepor Beel, a freshwater lake on the city outskirts. This is how the single-use plastics, except a little quantity collected by ragpickers for recycling industries, find way to the dumping site near the wetland, the lone Ramsar site in Assam. Such practice has been continuing even though the Central government issued a detailed Municipal Solid Waste Management Manual under the Swachh Bharat Mission way back in 2016. Heaps of solid wastes along different Guwahati roads have become official dumping and collection points and some households and passers-by are seen using these roadside points for dumping their household unsegregated wastes and single-use plastics. Poor awareness level among the citizens and executives about the importance of regulatory measures on reducing the harmful impact of single-use plastic is a prime reason behind such hazardous practice in the city. Unless the governments at the Centre, in the states, urban local bodies, policy makers and the citizens find out the reasons behind failure to implement the regulatory measures and adopting the best practices to phase out single-use plastic, hope for improvement in the prevailing scenario is only a wishful thinking. The awareness campaign lacks innovation and heavily celebrity-centric due to which the ordinary citizens do not get much space to feel enthusiastic about the campaign's important stakeholders. They fail to connect with the primary objective of such campaigns. The Non-Governmental Organizations have become outsourced revenue collector for urban local bodies and are not seen sensitizing the citizens on adoption of best practices of waste management at household level and equipping their collection system with systems of collecting segregated wastes. The urban local bodies like GMC have no effective system in place of engaging with the communities in different localities to sustain the awareness campaign or carrying out inspections to find out why segregation of wastes at household level is not working in the city. The gazetted notifications banning single-use plastics will remain ineffective without enforcement and desired level of awareness. According to the Central Pollution Control Board, India generates 3.3 million tonnes of plastic waste in a year. Lack of desired awareness coupled with rapid urbanization is going to aggravate the problem of single-use plastic in the coming years. Out-of-the-box solutions must be found to raise the awareness level to achieve at least significant reduction in use of single-use plastic as the country meeting the target of phasing it out completely by next year is a remote possibility.