UPSC Express

In brief: Ban on plastic waste import

Plastic imports: Global Trends

• Globally, plastic wastes from developed countries find their way to developing countries as they do not recycle their plastic waste on their own.
• China was a leading importer of plastic waste until recently when it banned the import of plastic waste.
• After Chinese ban, South East Asia is emerging as the global hub of plastic waste recycler including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam etc.
• India is also emerging as the leading plastic waste importer of plastic waste in the aftermath of the Chinese ban.

 

Plastic imports: Indian Scenario

• India was the 10th largest importer of plastic waste in the world until Chinese ban.
• Now the plastic waste imports especially PET bottles have substantially increased in the last few years.
• This is because India recycles almost 90% of all the PET bottles generated domestically.

 

Data:

• In 2016-17 plastic waste imports was 12,000 million tonnes.
• This increased to 48,000 million tonnes in 2017-18.
• In first 3 months of 2018-19, India has already imported 25,000 million tonnes

 

Reasons for increase

• Increase in plastic waste is attributed to
• Chinese ban on plastic waste imports
• As a result increasing plastic waste imports from China, Italy, Japan and Malawi.

 

Plastic waste import ban

• India banned plastic import in 2015.
• This was done for 2 reasons:
  • Inability to recycle large domestic plastic waste already generated
  • In order to incentivize the domestic plastic recycling

• However, plastic imports were allowed in SEZs and EOUs.
• The new order completely bans import of plastic waste including SEZ and EOU.

 

Additional information: Domestic plastic waste

• India generates about 26000 tonnes of plastic waste every day.
• The level of recycling of plastic waste is abysmally low with only 56% of plastic waste generated is recycled.
• The main reasons are
• Inefficient waste segregation
• Inadequate collection. (40% goes uncollected)