In his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister had coaxed the citizens to dispense with the use of single use plastic by 2022. Plastic is made directly from fossil fuels and its production itself causes pollution. It is estimated that 4% of the world’s oil production is used as a feedstock to make plastics. However, what all constitutes single use plastic needs clarity of intent and purpose for its ban to be effective. Some products that are sought to be banned include plastic cutlery, plastic bags and certain Styrofoam items. The Earth Policy Institute, an independent non-profit environmental organization based in Washington, reported, nearly one trillion plastic bags being used worldwide and eight million tons of plastic washed into the oceans every year, pushing the world to a plastic pollution crisis. India generated 26,000 tonnes per day (TPD) plastic waste in 2017-18, according to the Central Pollution Control Board. 15,600 TPD or 60% was recycled, with the rest ending up as litter on roads, in landfills or in streams. The slow degradation in landfill leads to undesirable land fill gas (LFG) emissions, methane in the main.
With climate change a serious issue, and shifting seasons seen all over the globe, plastics pose a major challenge in emissions from production, transportation and incineration. It contributes greenhouse gases in the equivalent of 850 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. By 2050 plastic could emit 56 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, as much as 14% of the earth’s carbon budget and by 2100, the figure is expected to grow to 260 billion tons, more than half the carbon budget. Further, the manufacturing of plastic releases many toxic chemicals which are carcinogenic or neurotoxic. These include vinyl chloride from PVC; dioxins and benzene from polystyrene; and formaldehyde from polycarbonates. Bisphenol A, or BPA, an endocrine disruptor, highly carcinogenic, used in manufacture of plastics bottles, food and beverage cans, is eventually released into the water and food that we drink and eat. We also ingest BPA from all the fish we eat, that has previously ingested the plastic floating in the ocean. The future looks positively dangerous if not addressed.
The clarion call of the PM is indeed a great move, from an environment perspective since plastic needs at least a thousand years to degrade. Anything not bio-degradable just stays as it is and adds to the pollution besides being a health hazard to life around it. What then are the alternatives? Are the alternatives really eco-friendly? Will plastic just be replaced with something else? What long-term solutions can be thought of as alternatives to disposable bags? Even the consumerist behaviour and ‘use and throw culture’ in the society will need to be addressed to find tangible solutions. India’s plastic recycling rate is 60%, and India’s per capita plastic consumption is about 15 Kg. We certainly have to figure out how the trash will be recycled efficiently.
According to the All India Plastic Manufacturers’ Association (AIPMA), India has over 30,000 plastic making units employing 4 million people, 2.25 Lakh Crores market size of plastic processing value and 2000 exporters in the plastics business. Many of these units are in the unorganised sector. In times of economic downturn, can the country afford layoffs triggering a further downturn? Besides, plastic is cheap and durable in many applications. Even if a ban is enforced, it would be rather difficult to implement it, what with a mushrooming unorganised sector. Environment protection was never a consideration even among the giants in the trade till recently.
Businesses today are replacing plastic with alternatives like paper and biodegradable materials to manufacture bags, straws, packaging, cups and cutlery. We all may be feeling it is the right thing to do, but is it? Rather loosely put, the making of paper is, ‘starts out as a tree in a tree farm and is taken to a mill, where the trees are made into a squishy pulp, the pulp then being rolled into paper.’ It is another matter that unlike a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification in the US that assures environmentally friendly recycled paper, none exists in our country. Flip side is, with the decrease in readers of newspapers in paper form leading to a drop in demand for virgin newsprint, the forestry industry is seeking new avenues to rescue the industry from a local recession. The so-called mechanical pulp could be productively used as plastic replacement.
Though several benefits accrue to using paper, main is its biodegradability in 2 to 6 weeks compared to almost 500 years for plastic. A research on packaging materials from raw materials to recycling using “life cycle analysis”, conducted in University of Oregon, concluded that the carbon footprint of a plastic bag is less than a paper or cotton bag, due to water usage and pollution besides causing deforestation, air pollution, water pollution and enormous waste. Paper packaging cannot also contain contamination easily. On the economic front, a paper bag would need to be reused up to 43 times before having a net environmental benefit, as opposed to the common plastic bag that needs to be reused once to have the same benefit. Paper containers lined with plastic to increase shelf life could be thought of. PLA, poly-lactic acid, or a polyester produced by fermentation under controlled conditions of a carbohydrate source like corn starch or sugarcane, used as a lining on paper products could be better. It is also fairly easy to recycle back into paper since it is a non-synthetic material whose manufacturing does not rely on chemical reactions. But then, the agricultural land used to grow corn would not be available to grow food.
Using paper from trees could also be a major contributor to climate change and loss of wildlife habitat. Every year, 13 million hectares of forest disappears, although afforestation adds another eight back, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). Some of the alternatives to ‘paper from trees’ that must be explored are paper from seaweed, or bio plastics made from corn, plants, sugarcane and algae or those created from bio polymers.
Almost all plastics can be recycled into something. Historically, plastics cannot be turned back into their original materials. Plastic bottles can become materials for park benches, Styrofoam becomes picture frames, and plastic bags become composite lumber. Recycling plastics is as important as using bio polymers as alternatives.