Polymer blended bitumen roads”, they are roads
made of plastic waste in India. “Plastic is not the
villain, we are the problem.
equivalent of ten lakh carry bags could
be used to make a kilometre of road.
Then there was co-chairman of
the environment committee AIPMA
(All India Plastic Manufacturers’
Association) Harish Sanghvi. He called
plastic a super-capable material that has
little scope for alternatives. Conceivable
alternatives like glass, tin and paper don’t
stand a chance against it. He mentioned
that plastics were, in a way, m ore ecology
friendly than these substitutes because
they required much loess processing. He
also mentioned how health hazards for
workers were higher when it came to the
alternatives rather than with plastic.
The gathering also had the valuable
presence of Dr Abdul Kader, a principal
scientist with the Central Institute of
Plastics Engineering and Technology
(CIPET). He elaborated on bio-plastics
and how feasible and effective they
were. Within the bio-plastics category,
he mentioned three forms—degradable,
bio-degradable and composte plastics.
He also spoke in length about bioplastic
production capacities across the world.
The next speaker was Richa Tyagi
from the World Wildlife Fund for nature
(WWF-India). Her presentation showed
the impact plastic has on the animals
around. She also spoke about how
handling rules can bring about positive
change in attitude.
To provide an insight into things on
the ground, Raghav Chandra, our next
speaker, spoke about his own, rather
successful, experiments with waste
management in the urban sphere. Mr
Chandra is secretary, NCST, Government
of India. He is former principal secretary
of urban development, MP. While his
tenure in MP, Mr Chandra laid the
foundations of Bhopal and Indore being
declared the top two clean cities of
the country under the Swachh Bharat
mission. He talked about his efforts in
the past and what he learned from them.
This brings us to the third session of
the event, which saw S.K. Ray, honorary
secretary, ICPE. The session was chaired
under Ray and saw the participation of
experts from diverse fields. Dr Mahua
Saha, senior scientist with the National
Institute of Oceanography, was the first to
present here. She showed how adversely
plastic waste, along with other waste, was
affecting marine life in our oceans. She
mentioned that it was not just the surface
of the oceans that plastic polluted, but it
had caused pollution in many layers of
the oceans.
Next up was Vidya Amarnath, who
spoke about her unusual start-up venture
Paterson Energy—a soulutions-based
company that seeks to convert plastic
into energy. The company runs shredded
plastic waste through various processes
to obtain high-quality plastic oil that
can be used in a number of things such
as the construction industry, road laying
and in powering marine DG engines. She
floated the idea that people should ‘pay
for the waste they produce’ in order to
bring in individual accountability. While
this might appear to be a far off thought,
it does offer the kind of measures that will
have to be experimented with in order to
address the crisis in waste management.
Next up was a senior scientist Sunil
Kumar, representing NEERI (National
Environmental Engineering Research
Institute), Nagpur. He showed the plastic
consumption graph of different industry
sectors in India. He also gave examples
of plastic segregation and recycling
processes in developed countries and
what India could learn from them.
The final speaker for the panel session
was Divya Tiwari, CEO of SAAHAS, a
non-governmental organisation. Divya
covered the important topic of extended
producer responsibility (EPR), which
seeks to include the cost of the product
till its last stage in the price of the
product. This would make the producer
take the full responsibility of the
collection and disposal of the product
one it is consumed. She said how, if EPR
is built into the existing network, it could
be shared by the society as a whole.