Many of the approaches promoted to address plastic pollution rely heavily on capital and energy intensive technologies that have repeatedly fallen short of reducing pollution effectively. Financial incentives and policy frameworks also remain skewed in favour of large-scale but ineffective quick-fixes propagated by industry, over genuine systemic change. While activists argue that reducing plastic production is the only viable solution, Global Plastic Treaty negotiations remain stalled by a deep divide between the petrochemical lobby and countries pushing for production caps
India generates 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste per day. About 60% of this is sorted by people like Khatun who form the informal waste recycling sector in India. There are an estimated 1.5 million (15 lakh) workers who participate in this sector. In recent years, many new “green solutions” have been proposed to tackle plastic waste, but several of them offer only superficial fixes doing little to reduce pollution. They, in turn, land up stripping waste workers of their livelihood while also generating more emissions than they appear to curb. These energy and capital intensive technologies are concentrating the responsibility of waste management in the hands of a few conglomerates. Additionally, policy solutions like Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for plastic packaging, meant to encourage companies to design better packaging, are being undermined by some companies that use loopholes in the system to buy fraudulent credits and claim compliance without any real action.
Plastics are a combination of petrochemical polymers (large molecules composed of smaller units called monomers) and a variety of additives to get desired attributes like elasticity and colour. “On recycling, the polymer chains break down into shorter chains and the quality deteriorates. Even PET, considered the best recyclable plastic, can only be recycled three to four times before it is rendered useless “So it is essentially down cycling, which means it is slowing the journey of plastic to the landfill. And it is no more food grade because we are not even aware of the kind of chemicals in the original product. A2024 report by the Centre for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, says most plastics except PET and HDPE have no end markets, so they are either incinerated or sent to landfills. Also, to maintain purity of the recycled plastic, a clean waste stream of a specific kind of plastic is required which is difficult to maintain in plastics discarded after use especially in countries where waste segregation is still a challenge.
As India grapples with mounting plastic waste, a growing number of disposal technologies are being promoted as efficient, green answers to the crisis. Yet many of these approaches, while presented as solutions, offer only limited environmental gains and often create new problems of their own such as higher emissions, toxic by-products and undermining efforts to reduce waste at its source. The most common plastic waste disposal solution adopted in India is incineration, where the output is used as an alternative fuel in cement plants or to generate power. A thermal “Waste to Energy” (WtE) plant incinerates non-recyclable combustible waste to produce heat which further generates steam to produce electricity. According to the Swachch Bharat Mission guidelines “WTE projects are financially and operationally viable only with assured input of minimum 150-200 tonnes per day of non-recyclable, high-calorific value segregated dry waste. “However, only 10-20% waste in India is worth incineration, most of it is biodegradable.
WtE emits between 250-600 kg CO2 per tonne of incinerated waste, equivalent to that from coal combustion besides dioxins and furans, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and heavy metals like lead and mercury in their bottom ash that is around 27-40% of the input waste. WtEs have been reported to dump this ash in the open. The high capital cost of WtEs and the public private partnership model creates a long-term lock-in effect for civic bodies. “The municipal bodies are bound to provide the company with a stipulated amount of waste daily otherwise the plant will have to pump in diesel to reach the required calorific value. This discourages any initiatives in waste reduction at source. That’s why; WtE is called a ‘hungry beast.
Co-processing plastic waste in cement plants to fuel them is touted as a “Circular economy solution, claiming to divert waste from landfills while reducing dependence on fossil fuel in cement plants. Without adequate pollution control equipment however, co-processing has emissions too. “Burning plastic is in fact worse than burning coal so it does not really address the issue of using fossil fuel. Disposing plastics like this gives a false sense of recycling to consumers. An extension of processing plastic in this way is the chemical recycling process, where plastic waste is converted into oil, gas or its basic building block, the monomer, in a highly controlled environment. “It’s pyrolysis. They put plastic waste in a sealed chamber, reduce oxygen and heat and it breaks down. The process consumes a lot of energy and emits toxins. The plastic still cannot be recycled back to the same quality as is the case in metal recycling
“It is clear that only inclusive, community-led zero waste strategies that deliver climate and social benefits will work. So, it’s time that policymakers invest in solutions that empower communities — not polluting disposal systems.. However, financial flows show an opposing trend. A 2024 report by the Circularity Initiative revealed that out of $190 billion private investment in tackling plastic pollution, 82% was channelled to downstream solutions like recovery and recycling. “Solutions such as refill and reuse, received only $8 billion (4%),” notes the study that tracked investments in 100 countries. Another 2023 study by Climate Policy Initiative that tracked funding for methane abatement found that 94% of the finance meant for reducing methane from solid waste went to waste incineration. Countries like Indonesia, Nepal and Costa Rica have also listed WtE in their nationality determined Contributions a country’s individual targets for greenhouse gas mitigation.
“Polluting technologies are increasingly shutting down in the global North but multilateral banks are still funding such plants in the Global South, more so in areas where it is difficult to monitor compliance, which shows their double standards. “Private companies are monopolising the entire waste value chain by picking up contracts of transportation and charging a high processing fee. In Chennai, it is Rs 2000/ton. This has pushed the informal waste workers out of the system..
The waste pickers will not suffer if plastic is replaced, says Jai Prakash Chaudhary, an informal waste worker who now runs a PET bottle bailing plant in Delhi’s Jakhira. “Twenty years ago, there was only metal, in future, it could be cardboard. As long as there is segregation, the rag picker will survive. But these large companies are killing our livelihood by taking away the entire waste. People feel all their garbage is being recycled while actually they are just burning it and harming our health.
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