Many of us think that the plastic problem is nothing but a littering issue that can be fixed by appointing more Safai Karamcharis, waste workers and bins. Some of us get deeper into the issue and are able to see that we cannot just sweep it away, we generate just too much of it and behavioral change is critical to reduce the quantum of plastic waste. Hence the responsibility is fixed on the NGOs to bring about this awareness. Those of us with a more technical view point argue that by setting up advanced recycling facilities, we can not just solve the problem but also make money in the process! After all, we have all been told that plastic is 100% recyclable! However, as per a 2015 study, since plastic was produced commercially in 1950 till 2015, 8.3 billion tons of it was produced across the world and just 9% of it was recycled! Does plastic recycling work, who can really solve this problem — Waste Workers, Consumers, NGOs or Recyclers?

Plastic waste is becoming one of humanity’s biggest challenges and a lot of focus is coming from governments and international bodies like the UN on this issue. World Environment Day 2023 theme was #beatplasticpollution. The focus of most of these initiatives is on the above actors namely Waste Workers, Consumers, NGOs and Recyclers. These 4 cannot solve it by themselves, this is one clarity that we have got in the last few decades of this battle. This is because all of them operate at the end of pipe; they come into the picture after the plastic products and packaging is delivered into the market. What is urgently needed is controlling what is getting into the pipe, at the beginning. This does not mean banning plastic, that is impossible in today’s world. However, where and how plastic is used must be critically examined and controlled. Unbridled usage must not be allowed. All Plastic items must be assessed wrt their reusability and recyclability. How many product designers deploy ‘recyclability’ as a key optimization parameter?

There are serious logistical, technological, and economic challenges in recycling plastic. Although plastics are classified under just 7 material types: PET, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP, PS and Others, there are many sub-categories. For example, by adding a concoction of chemicals and deploying different processing techniques PP can be made soft or hard, opaque or transparent, light or heavy, insulating or conducting. There are 13,000 commercial grades of PP available in the market today! Imagine when all these varieties of materials come for recycling, sorting them is like solving a 13,000-piece puzzle! If we want to recycle them into virgin material quality, they need customised processing to remove the specific chemicals they contain. For most materials, the technology does not even exist to separate all these chemicals, even if technology exists it is often economically unviable. The cost to collect, clean and sort all this wide variety of plastic materials and then processing them to remove all the impurities is far more expensive compared to using virgin raw material which is a bi-product of the fossil fuel industry. Producing plastic from virgin raw material is much cheaper and easier than producing high quality recycled plastic. Additionally, plastic recycling is polluting as the chemicals that are generated in the process largely get released in air, water, soil.

Hence, if we want recycling to become an attractive alternative compared to extracting virgin materials, we need to improve the quality and reduce the cost of recycling. Both can be achieved if we bring in Item-Material Standardisation. For example, if every single food delivery container has identical material composition, thickness and colour, then sorting them would be easy and cheap. Additionally, as they form a big part of our waste, the recycling facility will get loads of this waste locally and we can have large scale operations to bring down the cost. The colors, additives etc. must also be restricted so that their removal is easy and environment friendly. We recommend that strict Material Standardisation is brought in for the following high volume plastic packaging items which means all items in a category must have identical material specification irrespective of the brand:

Category 1: Beverage containers — Water, Juices, and soda drinks

Category 2: Snacks and all other dry food packets

Category 3: Food delivery containers

Category 4: Non-Food, Dry Items like detergents, soaps etc.

Category 5: Tubes — cosmetics, medicines, food

Category 6: Milk pouches

All of these must be preferably packed in single layers and not multi layers and the material selection must be done considering recycling feasibility even if the cost of packaging goes up. Packaging design must also be standardized in terms of size and shape and multi-part packaging with different materials must be scrutinised for example a product with a PP cap, PET bottle and PVC label must not be allowed. Similarly, paper cartons must only be wrapped by paper tapes and not plastic tapes so that carton recycling does not have plastic contamination. The dyes in the paper tapes must be environment friendly. Color can also be an easy differentiator between similar looking packaging materials e.g. all dry food could be mandated to be in transparent or white while all the non-food packaging can be mandated to be in green/black so that by just looking at the packet one can differentiate the material.

Plastic packaging can be completely avoided for certain items e.g. eggs can be exclusively packed in recycled paper; the bubble wrap and other plastic materials used for fragile goods could be replaced by corrugated paper. Mandating certain products/items to be made of one single material will strengthen and clean up the recycling supply chain.

Plastic material Standardisation is a low hanging fruit that must be explored to address plastic pollution. This can be driven by the government or by the plastic industry itself. Standardisation as a measure is less disruptive and more effective compared to the Single Use Plastic ban that the government had brought in. This would not lead to loss of livelihood and it would also be easier to monitor as only the large producers of these packaging containers/sheets need to be monitored. The SUP ban failed as it required monitoring a very large number of small retailers, vendors and end consumers as plastic bags, straws, ice cream sticks etc. are low value items, often produced informally in small scale with no branding and traceability. The containers and packets listed above are mostly produced by a few big brands hence standardization can be implemented and monitored more easily.

The need of the hour is to control the tap, if not close the tap, else the tub will continue to overflow.