Where there’s rubbish there’s nearly always plastic. Bengaluru’s streets are littered with tiny white and black plastic bags that fly into drains or simply lie around being an eyesore. While the other rubbish has a good chance of bio degrading even if left to rot on roadsides, the plastic bags have a life of their own and are not getting any fewer in the city despite the partial ban on the thinner variety which are even harder to dispose of. Those concerned by the state of the environment are now hoping the Supreme Court notice to the Union and state governments inviting response on a total ban on plastic bags will work where the partial ban has failed.

Getting rid of plastic will not be easy, however, as it constitutes 700 tonnes of the over 5,000 tonnes of waste that Bengaluru throws up every day. Most of it is made up of plastic sheets. Should a ban on plastic bags actually work the city will have 400 tonnes less rubbish to dispose of every day.

“The ban on plastic bags should include packaging material for food items and plastic sachets. Besides thin bags, the wrappings for chips and biscuit packets and shampoo sachets constitute a big chunk of the city’s plastic waste and are responsible for most of the pollution,” says a senior officer of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, pointing out that plastic, being non biodegradable, takes over 500 years to decompose and so pollutes the soil, air and water when dumped in landfills.

While the Supreme Court may have the best of intentions by suggesting a total ban on use of plastic bags, some experts believe it is impractical and unworkable. “A total ban on plastic bags cannot be enforced. What we need is not a ban on plastic use but a ban on plastic littering. What can be and should be banned is unnecessary use of plastic-like for covers of magazines, for wrapping bouquets in and so on,” says Almitra H. Patel, member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management, suggesting that all plastic bin liners discarded with kitchen waste should be of the fully compostable (of IS 17088 quality) kind so they will not choke a cow even if it happens to swallow them.

“This is the reason people went to court seeking a ban on use of plastic sheets. If the municipality has the will to collect segregated waste, it can make bylaws to collect plastic-free wet waste every day and plastic once a week. If plastic is viewed like old newspapers are, nobody would throw it away and instead sell it to recyclers who can use it for making roads and even corrugated roofing,” she says.

All about ‘Use, reuse and recycle’
The way forward is clearly to shift the emphasis from “use and throw” of plastic to “use, reuse and
recycle.” What it needs is vision and the will to translate it into reality. But it can be done as experiments with recycling have proved more than effective where they have been carried out.

“Plastic is currently effectively recycled by the non- formal industry which should be encouraged. But kabadiwalas don’t take plastic with metallised multi-film like chips wrappers as they have gummy nylon layers. This is why the best use of plastic waste is in road making,” says Almitra H. Patel, member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management, explaining that the Central Pollution Control Board has issued two guidelines on how to use plastic waste in bitumen for roads and comparing the life of plastic roads with normal bitumen roads laid in 2004.

“It has highlighted the fact that plastic roads have a two to three times better life than normal roads and result in cost saving too. The technology uses all the plastic waste including chips wrappers,” she adds Another technology that is maturing is plastics to fuel (P2F) which produces solid char and liquid diesel like fuel and gas. It is considered ideal for locations where cost of transporting waste is high like in the Andamans and Lakshadweep.

“Plastic waste is used in the cement industry too. It cuts down cost of production as some of the coal used to heat the kiln can be replaced by plastic,” says a KSPCB official.