Plastic waste management supply chain issues in India

Indian waste management market is growing as the waste increases on a larger scale. About 0.15 million tonnes of municipal solid waste generated everyday in India, out of which more than 25,000 tonnes is plastic waste. Dependent on informal sector, the present scenario of India’s waste management system is challenging and needs formalization. To solve the issue of plastic waste Extended Producer Responsibility was introduced and it can have an impact in the way plastic is produced or disposed of. EPR was introduced through the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016. EPR is a practice whereby Producers, Importers and brand owners (PIBOs) are given responsibility for collection (take back) and scientific disposal of their post-consumer plastic waste. Done by company’s own channels or outsourced to EPR agencies, EPR process has it’s own challenges and inconsistencies while implementing the process. There is lot that goes on in the EPR process right from documentations to on ground activities. We have discussed an overall insight when it comes to plastic waste management supply chain in today’s blog.

1. The main issues for supply chain are related to the collection, transportation and documentation process.

• Delay in loading and unloading of vehicle carrying waste, communication response and documentation not done on time might hold on or slow down the further process for waste management.
• The quality expectation of waste for scrap dealer and recycler gets mismatched during it’s collection.
• Documentation: The issue when documentation is concerned is that of unclear photos of vehicles carrying waste. These photos are important for the documentation process and are clicked by the people who don’t have much knowledge about taking photos or lack a good device to do so.

2. Collection

ULB/MRF

The waste collected at source is sent to the to Material Recovery Facilities(MRF) for further sorting and has the following issues

• Non-recyclable: Sometimes, there is no sorting of flexible recyclable plastic waste.
• Variation in Material Quality like some plastic waste could have a high moisture level makes it difficult for sorting.
• Waste material is not loaded properly in the vehicle and leads to wastage of the material.
• Mismatching in the loaded and demanded material is very prevailing issue.
• Sometimes the required material is not available on the monthly basis.
• Delay in responding and sharing of documents is something common in every step of waste management system.

3. Scrap Dealer

As mentioned earlier, Indian waste management is dependent on the informal market and Scrap dealers are part of it. As the informal sector is not formalized, there exists numerous issues and we’ve discussed them below

• Price variation: Scrap dealers fix different prices for the waste material by themselves, and all the prices are nearby the market price. Price gets high if the scrap dealers shop is situated nearby the market.
• Quality: The material quality expectation of a recycler can be different from that of a scrap dealer. Hence it’s difficult to define and manage actual quality meaning between them. Recycler doesn’t want any mix in the waste material, but scrap dealer doesn’t care about whether there is any mix or not. Quality gets changed on the region basis as well, hence the expectation doesn’t match easily.
• Trust issue: Due to lack of proper channel, scrap dealers trust only when they get cash in hand for the material. And the scrap dealers, if makes a deal with one customer tends to break it if some other customer brings in a better price and will sell the material without informing it to the first customer.
• Time of delivery: Scrap dealers don’t want to deliver the product later, whoever gives the price first and is ready to buy the material quickly will get the material. It’s not the case that they want to continue customer relationships.

4. Transportation:

• The vehicle required for transportation of waste is not available on time and hence slows down the further processes.
• Distance between vehicle loading point location and vehicle weight bridge is far away.
• Sometimes photos of proof documents are not clear.

5. Disposal

Recycler:

• There is lack of proper documentation and also delay in providing these documents.

Co-processing Unit:

• Delay in internal communication gap leads to delay in unloading the vehicle carrying waste and the unload is not done on time.
• Unloading weight receipt not provided easily and the co-processing unit makes an error sometimes in the name of company mentioned on the receipt.
• Most of the time communication responses are not easily received from the co-processing unit.
• The certificate is not shared on time.

Apart from environmental challenges associated with plastic waste management in India, these were the issues faced at various levels of solid waste management system in India. Our part as citizens is to segregate the waste properly before disposing it, and avoid making more waste by adopting conscious choices. Social lab is doing it’s part for managing plastic waste by disposing it scientifically and we have launched a digital platform ‘Saksham’ which is a digital platform that makes EPR compliance simpler and hassle free and also helps scrap dealers and recyclers to generate revenue from EPR mandate.

Contributed by- Zeba Asif, Manager and Ashlesha Karande, Communication Executive at Social Lab

Social Lab Environmental Solutions is a waste management company, which helps brands take-back and scientifically dispose of post-consumer plastic waste of their products. Brands take our services to fulfill Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligation under Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2018.

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