Chandrajit Banerjee Writes: India Has Taken the First Steps to Building a Circular Economy for Plastics

Across our planet, the consumption of finite natural resources is placing a large strain on the environment, with changing geopolitical dynamics adding new dimensions to the challenge. Waste accumulation is an equally significant challenge and a search for solutions has led to an increasing interest in and a move towards the principles of circular economy.

Where plastics are concerned, there is a fine line to be traversed, because they are valuable and extremely useful materials, but easily accessible and low-priced enough to be poorly managed at the end-of-life stage. Municipal solid waste generation is predicted to almost double by 2050 from 2.1bn tonne in 2023, with an associated direct cost of waste management estimated at $252bn (UNEP Global Waste Management Outlook 2024).

Projections suggest that adopting a circular economy model, in which waste generation and economic growth are decoupled could help manage this waste. Strategies such as avoiding waste generation, sustainable business practices and full waste management underpin circularity and bring added economic and social value by creating livelihoods and employment opportunities.

A Persistent Problem

Circular approaches include bans, such as those on single-use plastic, which the Government of India has put in place, or targets for recycling and use of recycled content, such as those notified in the Extended Producer Responsibility Guidelines of the Plastic Waste Management Rules. Backed and complemented by the Swachh Bharat Mission, these are commendable first steps towards building a circular economy for plastics in India.

Apart from leading to better management of waste, they are intended to place better-designed materials on market shelves. However, there is a long path to travel, with challenges and opportunities opening up for all stakeholders in the plastics value chain.

Supporting the transition to a circular economy are infrastructure, finance, research into new and alternative materials and technologies. In India, informal workers, estimated at four million, form the backbone of collection and segregation and channel most of the municipal solid waste, with little training or infrastructural support—this is a gap but also a massive opportunity, with potential for building an entire sector of the economy focused on systematically managing waste.

Backed by another circular economy tenet, designing for end-of-life, a valuable material resource can find its way back into the economy via recycling and reuse systems and stay out of the environment and waste streams, incineration or landfill.

For materials to be channelled back into the product life cycle, large capacities and advanced mechanical and other recycling technologies distributed across the country will be needed. However, although India is a large recycler of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with about 85% of PET waste being collected and even higher amounts recycled, this is not true of other resins of plastic, even though they are widely used.

In a clear example of the impact of strong and consistent policy, recycling capacity in India is rising, with increasing investments in high-quality recycling equipment supporting closed-loop recycling. As of December 2024, it was reported that investments worth over ₹10,000 crore have been made in the recycling sector over the past three years.

India’s large consumption of flexible packaging is a challenge, with limited capacity currently available and a wide range of compositions in the market, which hampers high-quality recycling.

Sustainable Solutions

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is addressing some of these gaps through voluntary business actions and by working collaboratively with stakeholders across the plastics value chain on challenges faced by producers and brand owners in meeting EPR requirements. We are placing baseline and landscape assessments in the public domain which help document current practice/capacity and identify gaps.

In addition to the adoption of circular economy approaches, it is essential for cross-cutting aspects such as citizen behaviour to be addressed. These are important from the viewpoint of promoting better segregation of waste at source and therefore, cleaner inputs to recyclers.

In the short term, extensive campaigns are required at the national level, with a clear and consistent messaging to ‘nudge’ citizen behaviour in the desired direction. These will go a long way in increasing the flow of recyclable material to end markets and promote circularity, but also in the context of micro, small and medium enterprises which dominate the plastics value chain.

Here, extensive capacity building and awareness programmes are required to encourage environmentally sound practices. Such actions can begin immediately in plastics manufacturing and recycling clusters and will have a large impact in the medium to long-term.

We have initiated work with brands on transitioning to recyclable packaging and identifying end markets for recycled material in an attempt to address information asymmetries.

This will also underline and provide evidence for the need to promote or even mandate adherence to design guidelines for greater impact: any steps taken towards standardisation will help promote circularity.

The long journey towards a circular economy for plastics has begun slowly, but surely. The government has already laid the groundwork by providing the policy framework that encourages actions across the value chain.

The writer is director general, Confederation of Indian Industry