Ticking plastic bomb: Why the ban is a painful but necessary step

Come October 2 and India will join an elite list of countries that ban the usage of single-use plastic. While there are many countries across the globe that have imposed curbs or taxes on plastic, an outright ban is still a rarity. Only a handful of nations have taken measures against the use, manufacture and distribution of single-use plastic or SUP, as it is popularly called.  Bangladesh was the first country to impose an outright ban on thin plastic bags. Over the years, many others have followed suit, including China and many African nations. In fact, Kenya is renowned to have enforced the ban on plastic bags quite stringently, with big fines and even imprisonment. There are other countries that have taken the economic way, imposing taxes and fines to disincentivise SUP.  Yet, the menace has never been resolved. The question as to what is a good approach, the carrot or the stick to plastic pollution, hasn't been answered.

Globally, awareness has been rising about the negative impact of SUP, how it ends up in landfills, finds its way into the ocean, and causes a plethora of environmental issues, right from turning up in the food chain to killing marine life. Back home, 18 Indian states have introduced a ban on SUP in various forms. Even so, we continue to generate humongous amount of waste on a day-to-day basis. According to a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report, Indian cities generate 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste – enough to fill 1,500 trucks, at 10 tonnes per truck – of which 9,000 tonnes are collected and processed or recycled, while the remaining 6,000 tonnes, or 600 truckloads, usually litter drains, streets or are dumped in landfills. According to the report, about 66 percent of plastic waste is mixed waste – polybags and pouches used to pack food, mainly from residential localities.

And while India’s per-capita consumption of plastic at 11 kg per year is among the lowest in the world (as opposed to a global average of 28 kg per year), the total volume generated is a mammoth 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day. No wonder it is estimated that India accounts for 60 percent of plastic waste dumped into the world’s oceans every year. Three of the world’s ten rivers that carry 90 percent of plastic to the world’s oceans are in India – the Indus, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, according to an October 2017 article in Environmental Science & Technology, a global journal.