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| Edited By: Sandip Sen |Source: DNA |Updated: Jul 11, 2018, 07:15 AM IST
This month, Maharashtra became the 26th Indian state to ban the use of plastics. It also became the second state to ban the use of single use, disposable plastics. The NGT in January 2017 had imposed a ban on the use of disposable plastic, such as glasses, plates, forks, spoons besides bags which were less than 50 microns in Delhi. Unfortunately none of these bans have been effective.
Like smoking, the use of plastic has become a human habit. Like a substance abuse we cannot leave it. Its utility, and all round convenience, and the cheap cost cannot be matched. It is so cheap that it cannot be replaced. Recycled plastic is even cheaper, though it causes more environment pollution. So alternative materials don’t get a look in. The bans just don’t succeed.
It is not only the stores and the shops who are to blame. We citizens are equally to blame and do not bat an eyelid on using the thin plastic bags. The politicians, the administrators, the police and the courts know that the bans are ineffective and cannot be implemented. In fact they all use it. Even outside India the ban on plastics has been only partly successful. Still we hide under the cover of plastic ban and congratulate ourselves for doing our bit for the environment, whenever such bans are imposed. While the ban is welcome, we need to go beyond the plastic ban.
Polluters must pay is a tried and tested rule. The lower consumption of cigarettes today shows that it works worldwide. We need a heavy taxation on plastics to ensure that it is not dirt cheap and so convenient. That it gives alternate materials a chance to compete.Taxing plastics heavily will ensure that producers pay for the disposal of the waste.
The current rate of GST on plastics is 18 per cent or lower. The additional revenues in case GST on plastics is raised to 28 per cent could be around Rs 20,000 crore each year. It would be a tidy amount for the Centre and states to start creating a scalable program to manage plastic waste. Today the Swachh Bharat program is largely focused on building of toilets because it is the first step towards cleanliness. That leaves little funds for processing the other waste that we keep generating continuously. A ‘sin tax’ on plastics would help in creating a fund base for managing that huge solid waste that we produce today, most of which is degradable other than plastics
Plastics is an invention of the fifties. The baby boomer generation know that they never used plastics when young. The world then was still moving famously. We had biscuit tins, jam bottles and bread wrapped in butter paper besides the stubborn cloth bags or jholas which our intellectuals have never left behind in our elite collages even today. So it is not that plastics cannot be replaced. It is just that it is so convenient and dirt cheap that we cling to it irresponsibly.
Unfortunately, plastic waste is unmanageable. It clogs our streets, our garbage dumps and water bodies. Over 100,000 pieces of plastic float on every square mile of the ocean endangering marine life. Now that we cannot manage the plastic waste we create, we are waking up slowly to stop or slow down its usage. We need to promote and encourage alternative use of materials and also reduce user convenience. We have to explore going back to the old ways of use. We need to bring out our old milk cans, our cloth bags and our metal tiffin boxes to carry away our food or consumables that we need.
China has taken the lead. Till last year, it was the world’s biggest recycler. That was before China stopped importing 24 types of solid waste including plastics, rubber tyres and certain types of metal and cardboard waste and mixed solid waste from the beginning of this year. The reason why China decided to refuse the solid waste from West for recycling is revealing. Beijing wrote to the WTO “Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,This polluted China’s environment seriously.” In short, China had realised that it could not recycle waste that was clearly increasing the health bill of its citizens.
In the first quarter of 2018, solid waste imports into China dropped by 54 per cent. This sent the Western economies into a tizzy. It also spiked recycling waste into Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. Deals with sweeteners are being offered to recyclers from India to take the dirty waste that China has refused to accept. India needs to ban plastic and mixed solid waste recycling and not import the waste that China has refused to accept. It will be difficult to refuse the offers being made because there are half a dozen western nations which are ready to pay a higher price for recycling. Refusing to recycle is critical for India, because China has already cleaned up its skies while India has fourteen of the fifteen most polluted cities in the world.
The writer is an author and senior journalist. Views are personal.
