If Waste Ventures’ name does not spell out clearly enough what it does, a visit to its office surely does the job. Located behind a weighbridge on the outskirts of Hyderabad, the startup’s headquarters are at the entrance to a partially roofless, 13,000 sq ft warehouse. Home temporarily to a tiny fraction of the city’s plastic and paper refuse, most of the godown can be manoeuvred only by crushing soft drink bottles and wafer packs underfoot.Two compactors are making 100 kg bales out of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, which are then piled on top of each other; the best view of the godown is afforded from atop these, from where you see the staff, mostly women, sorting the waste. Once the waste is sorted and compacted, it is sent to recyclers. Waste Ventures aggregates 150 tonnes every month, which is just 0.1% of Hyderabad’s waste. Of that, 90 tonnes are plastic. The company also offers Toter, an on-demand recyclable waste collection service.Companies like Waste Ventures are crucial to addressing one of the most daunting challenges facing city administrators and urban planners: how to manage tonnes of what we discard every day, particularly plastics, which are made from crude, and how to stop them from finding their way into the ocean and rivers.As per a 2013 estimate by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Indians throw out 15,342 tonnes of plastic waste every day, of which about 60% is recycled, most of it in the informal sector. While the recycling rate in India is considerably higher than the global average of 14%, there are still over 6,100 tonnes of plastic which are either landfilled or end up polluting streams or groundwater resources. While some kinds of plastic do not decompose at all, others could take up to 450 years to break down, leaving a vexing problem to address.Developing countries are especially vulnerable as their plastic consumption rapidly increases. Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan last year said the government plans to double India’s annual per capita consumption to 20 kg by 2022. An Indian on average uses 11 kg of plastic a year, about a tenth of what an American consumes and less than half the global average. While the Indian government’s target does not seem alarming next to developed countries’ love of plastics, the fact that there is no comprehensive mechanism in place yet to manage the waste we generate should be reason enough to panic.A survey of 60 Indian cities by the CPCB found that plastic accounts for 8% of all solid waste, with the figure going up to over 10% in nine cities, including Delhi that produces the maximum plastic waste in the country, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. The biggest hurdle to plastic recycling and waste management in general is non-segregation of waste at source. More often than not, segregation is done by waste pickers, which leads to a lot of soiled plastic and paper being left out of the recycling process and ending up in landfills.Roshan Miranda, cofounder of Waste Ventures, says the waste pickers they source from collect only segregated refuse. “Imagine plastic waste being mixed with sanitary napkins, diapers, egg and meat. Waste pickers can only do so much.” However, he adds, most of the high-value plastic like PET bottles and shampoo bottles, which are made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), are sorted by waste pickers before the waste is taken to the dumpyard. Low-value items like most carry bags are ignored by them since they are not worth the effort it takes to collect them.Since contractors are paid by the kilogram for the waste they take to dumpyards, there is no incentive for them to sort the waste before, according to Miranda. A third of Hyderabad’s households segregate their waste, while in Mumbai only 27% do. Companies like Waste Ventures and Mumbai-based RUR (which is short for Are You Reducing, Reusing,Recycling?) also help housing societies compost their organic waste; RUR has composted 100 tonnes so far.It has also recycled 1.9 million Tetra Pak cartons since 2010 through an initiative with the company. The cartons are made of 75% paper, 20% plastic and 5% aluminium , all of which are recyclable; these can be used to make school desks and park benches.Monisha Narke, founder of RUR, calls plastic a “beautiful invention”, given its wide application because of its light weight, low cost and other attributes. Plastics make up 50% of the Boeing Dreamliner and 15% of a car.“Where we missed the bus is in identifying the good and bad plastics. We started using it for everything and when we started moving to disposable plastics, it became a hazard.” Packaging is the single largest application of plastics — in India, it accounts for 43% of all plastics — and most packaging of consumer products is single-use.Globally, by 2050, plastic packaging production will be more than the overall plastic volumes today, according to a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Around 95% of the economic value of plastic packaging, or $80-120 billion a year, is lost after their first use. The economic cost of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the production of plastic packaging and the pollution caused by plastic waste is pegged at around $40 billion.Plastics’ share of global oil consumption is expected to more than treble to 20% between 2014 and 2050, and plastics’ share of the global carbon budget will see an even steeper rise, from 1% to 15%. (Carbon budget is the amount of carbon emissions that can be allowed while maintaining a reasonable chance of limiting the temperature increase this century to 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels.) An increase in recycling means a reduction in the dependence on virgin feedstock.One of the worst consequences of plastic waste is a lot of it ends up in the ocean. Around 8 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, with Asian countries responsible for four-fifths of it, and at present there are 150 million tonnes in seas. The WEF report says in 2014 there was 1 kg of plastic in the ocean for every 5 kg of fish; by 2025 the ratio will worsen to one to three; and by 2050 plastic will exceed fish by weight.Afroz Shah, a lawyer who has been leading a citizens’ clean-up drive on Mumbai’s Versova beach since October 2015, says 95% of the 5.5 million tonnes of waste they have collected so far is plastic, much higher than the 62% globally. “People asked me why I, a lawyer, didn’t file a PIL (public interest litigation). No law or court order is going to save the planet. Individuals will have to take up the responsibility.” Shah was given the United Nations Environment Programme’s top award in December for his efforts.Erik Solheim, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, believes fixing binding targets on countries is not always the best solution. “With the Paris Agreement (on climate change), we have seen overwhelming support based on voluntary commitments. I think that has made the agreement take on a life of its own, with cities, states, the private sector and private citizens seeking to contribute. This is precisely what we need to happen with plastics.”Key to the Indian government’s attempts, besides the much-publicised Swachh Bharat Mission, to tackle the problem are the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016. Unlike their predecessor, these rules cover not just cities, but also rural areas; the minimum thickness for carry bags has been raised from 40 microns to 50 microns; and, in what is a contentious clause, street vendors and retailers who provide plastic carry bags will have to pay a minimum monthly waste management fee of Rs 4,000, which could be impractical for small vendors. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has already levied penalties of Rs 18.20 lakh on those violating the 50 microns rule, according to additional commissioner N Ravi Kiran. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai officials were not available for comment.There have been calls for cities to adopt Pune’s model of joining hands with a cooperative of waste pickers to decentralise collection and processing waste. The initiative, which has been operational for a decade, covers 4,00,000 households. The 2,600 waste pickers of the cooperative collect 600 tonnes of solid waste a day, saving the Pune Municipal Corporation Rs 15 crore every year.The most important of the rules is extended producer responsibility (EPR). Plastic producers, importers and brand owners (like fast-moving consumer goods companies) will have to contribute to collection of plastic waste they introduce into the market, especially multi-layered plastic packs, which are hard to recycle.Waste Ventures’ Miranda claims two FMCG companies, without naming them, have asked his firm to collect 20 tonnes of non-recyclable plastics like laminated plastics, which are used in wafer packs. These are normally sent to waste-to-energy plants or used to power cement kilns.One criticism of EPR is the lack of specific targets in the rules. “It’s just a paragraph in the rules. There are no guidelines on how it will be implemented,” says Swati Singh of Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). An official at the CPCB, requesting anonymity, says the government is working on the guidelines. Questions sent to Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan went unanswered.Haren Sanghavi, president of the All India Plastic Manufacturers’ Association, says EPR should be the responsibility of brand owners and not polymer producers. “They (polymer makers) don’t know where their products are going. They don’t have the network FMCG companies have.” The plastic processing industry had volumes of 13.4 million tonnes and sales of Rs 1 trillion in 2015, according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry. Sanghavi says 40% of the industry is unorganised.Sustainable packaging is an issue plastic makers and FMCG companies cannot take lightly any longer. Unilever , one of the world’s largest FMCG companies, plans to make all its packaging “reusable, recyclable or compostable” by 2025. In addition to partnering non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in waste collection, Hindustan Unilever , the company’s India unit, claims the use of better materials for packaging helped it reduce polymer waste by 840 tonnes in 2015. Moreover, 80% of the PET used in blister packs for its brands like Pepsodent toothbrush and Fair & Lovely is recycled. “This ensures there is an application for newly available r-PET (recycled PET) resin in the market, thereby establishing circular economy thinking,” says a company spokesperson.Miranda says PET has the most established recycling market among all plastics in India. One of the biggest applications of recycled PET is in fabrics. He says 10 PET bottles could be recycled to make a T-shirt. Reliance Industries , the oil & gas behemoth that is also India’s largest maker of commodity plastics, collects 2 billion PET bottles every year and recycles them into polyester yarn. ITC Ltd, the cigarette, FMCG and hospitality company, has for over a decade been running an initiative called Well-being Out of Waste, which now covers 400 municipal wards in Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and some towns in Telangana . Sanjib Bezbaroa, head of ITC’s corporate environment, health and safety, says the programme impacts 3,00,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste annually. Talking of the company’s efforts to make its packaging more recyclable, the spokesperson adds, “If source segregated, the plastics used in ITC products can all be recycled. Having said that, we are focusing on increasing the quantum of single polymer-based packaging, which would enhance recyclability.”A spokesperson for Reliance says India could adopt Europe’s EPR model, which allows companies to pass on their individual obligation of taking back the waste from the market to producer responsibility organisations (PROs), of which companies are members. “This provides a long-term agreement of PROs with brand owners whereby PROs collect the waste on behalf of the brand owners and in return receive reimbursement of agreed charges from brand owners.”CSE’s Singh says the government is not doing much to encourage more sustainable alternatives to traditional plastic packaging. “Most people cannot afford Rs 5 or Rs 10 cloth bags.” Sanghavi says innovations like biodegradable plastic, which could be made out of corn starch or cellulose, are at present too expensive for mass adoption. As a result, such options are not an immediate solution to the problem of plastic waste and the need of the hour is a more systematic and organised waste management and recycling mechanism, which is unlikely without a stringent enforcement of the new rules.Additional reporting by CR Sukumar