Recycling Plastic

A number of sources from the government and the industry were accessed and analysed to come up with the report. Based on the findings of the report, CSE organized a webinar. Sector specialists like waste management social enterprises, plastic recyclers, researchers on informal sector were invited to be a part of the webinar, along with officials from the central pollution control board (CPCB). 

The session started with a welcome note by Mr. Atin Biswas, Director- Municipal Solid Waste Management team at CSE. He thanked everyone for the overwhelming participation from all the stakeholders including academia, industry, civil society and government agencies. He shared with all the panelists and participants that the challenges associated with plastic waste are multi-pronged and how recycling has always been promoted as the one stop solution to solve our plastic woes, providing us with a false sense of security. He took the audience through the lifecycle of plastic and how a considerable portion of the mismanaged plastic waste ultimately reaches our water bodies and becomes marine litter leading to problems beyond our imagination. 

Mr. Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh, Deputy Programme Manager, CSE presented the key findings of the report which set the context for the panel discussion. 

Key findings of the report:

• The amount of plastic waste generation in the country is uncertain. Multiple studies from the Central Pollution Control Board, claim generation which varies by over 60%.
• Unlike other waste streams, we do not have a national plastic recycling capacity.
• While it is claimed that India recycles 60% of it plastic waste of which 70% is recycled by the formal recycling sector- the number of formal recycling units in the country have gone down by 97% in the 2018-19 period, according to industry estimates.
• Unlike other countries, incineration is also put under the basket of recycling in India.
• Pseudo solutions like energy recovery and alternate use are being pushed into the market, and are gaining popularity among the producers and brand owners.
• The real meaning of recycling is not understood in our country.
• To tackle the problem of plastic, we will have to go upstream and work on designing products that are recyclable.

The session was followed by presentations from each of the Panellists: 

Mr. Siddharth Hande, Founder/ CEO, Kabadiwalla connect

Ms. PratibhaPriya, Chief Sustainability & Marketing Officer, LucroPlastecycle.

Mr. Zulkif Shaikh, Co-founder, Sanjeevani S3. 

The presentations were then followed by a targeted round of questions and answers which was moderated by Mr. Atin Biswas 

In the last session, relevant questions from the participants were directed towards the panellists. 

The Programme Director, Municipal Solid Waste Management Unit, CSE concluded the webinar with a concluding remark an thanked all the panellists and participants for being a part of the webinar. 

*Due to the absence of Ms. Divya Sinha, CPCB, the questions and deliberations from a policy view point could not be addressed. 

For further details:

Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh,
9768902012,
siddharth.singh@cseindia.org