India’s Love-Hate Affair with Plastics

A mountain of plastic waste.

September 6, 2019

On the one hand, plastics have had a significant role to play in India’s forward progress over the last decades, with plastic production playing a huge role in the economy (Indian exports in plastics are expected to surpass $8 billion for 2018-2019), and with plastic goods providing cheap and affordable availability for a multitude of basic, everyday items to one of the world’s poorest populations. But on the other hand, India is drowning in and choking on plastic waste. With no organized infrastructure for dealing with plastic waste management, India has become a punctuated microcosm for a problem that the rest of the world as a whole is grappling with: how to wean ourselves off of our addiction to plastics – especially single-use plastics, items which are typically used only once and then thrown away.

Already this year, India has pledged itself to eliminating single-use plastics by 2022, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently hinted that the government might take the initial step of actually banning at least some single-use plastic items.

For more details, read the full story here.

(Source: prakati.in)






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