‘Urgent need to implement solid waste management rules’

The generation of solid waste in urban India has been increasing rapidly, but little is being done to effectively implement the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules of 2016 brought in by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change. According to the EPR rules, producers, brand owners, importers, waste generators, along with the local body, must take up the responsibility to recollect, recycle and reuse the plastic waste generated by the stakeholders concerned in order to protect the environment and channelise the plastic waste into recycling. India generates over 25,940 tonnes of plastic waste per day, as per the census of 2011, and according to environmentalists, solid waste management in India is in a pathetic condition with little effort from either the local bodies or the waste generator. According to Ashish Jain, Director of Indian Pollution Control Association (IPCA), compliance of EPR rules is lacking because of the ambiguity of the law. “For all companies to fully comply with the law, the regulator needs to draft a law which is easy to understand and possible to implement in practice. In the present law, there is a lot of ambiguity and, therefore, companies and waste generators are making their own interpretation of the law, leading to little compliance. A law which is easy to understand even to the layman would have made implementation easier. There needs to be a lot of clarity on various points like who is producer, manufacturer, what is the target, etc,” Jain told The Sunday Guardian. However, last month an initiative has been taken to form a consortium of five companies—PepsiCo India, Nestle India, Perfetti Van Melle India, Dabur India, Dharmpal Satyapal Ltd and East Delhi Municipal Corporation—to fully comply with EPR rules. The pilot project—“We Care”— would initially be implemented in eight cities, including Delhi NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai and Dehradun.