Plastic Recycling and the need for Bio-polymers in India

PLASTICS RECYCLING and the NEED FOR BIO-POLYMERS in INDIA
ABSTRACT: Recycling is a flourishing business in India’s informal sector, retrieving 10-15% of urban wastes and employing millions in a sometimes illicit, twilight activity. But Recyclables are not always Recycled. This paper described what is recycled today, what is not, and therefore where there are opportunities for the use of bio-polymer products and packaging. New legislation may soon be framed to promote product stewardship, producer responsibility and waste minimization in India, similar to such legislation elsewhere.
Indians have a remarkably small ecological footprint compared to citizens in advanced countries. Non-biodegradable waste in large Indian cities averages just 50 - 100 gm per capita per day, compared to 1-2 kg in the West. Sadly, this is often disparaged as “backwardness” or under-development, rather than recognizing and appreciating the natural conservation culture of Indians, who will repair and use appliances and cars for years, hand down clothing to relatives or servants, waste no food, and even save paper and string for re-use. However, the sheer abundance of thin-film plastics has broken this habit. The sheer availability of not just carrybags, but bread wrappers, packaging of fresh foods and provisions like rice, dal etc, shrink-wrap, micro-packs of cosmetics and paan parag etc is far beyond the need or capacity of families to re-use them. So they get thrown away, and this has overwhelmed the ability of cities to handle this waste. Only low-gauge low-value plastic is a problem, as milk pouches etc are rarely thrown away; they still find their way directly to waste-buyers.
Organic waste has been a valuable resource for centuries, returning nutrients and micronutrients to the soil in a sustainable cycle. For this reason, the composting of biodegradable municipal waste is now mandatory for every urban local body under the MSW Rules 2000. But thin-film plastic packaging is creating a major problem.
In 1993 it was estimated that 1.5-2% by weight of municipal waste reaching the dumpsites and compost plants is thin-film plastic. Some recent estimates are as high as 7-9%. What is worse is, that regardless of the weight content in waste, by volume thin plastics are equal to or even more than the volume of compost produced. The capital cost and operating cost of machinery to separate out plastics from processed waste currently makes the compost unaffordably high-priced for farmers.
Almost all plastics are in fact recyclable, but are not recycled in practice. Why not? We need to study this, and see whether, where and how biodegradable plastics can substitute the non-recycled items.
Recycling given legal backing
Waste-picking is a well-established urban-survival tactic in mega-cities that act as magnets for the poorest, and recycling is a flourishing business in the informal sector in India. It supports upto 0.5 % of the population in million-plus cities, and saves the city 10-15% of its total waste-management costs through reduction in waste volumes handled. Yet small-scale cottage-industry recycling is still a mostly-unauthorised twilight activity as recyclers often operate behind closed windows and doors and avoid registration.
Only last year has recycling won formal legitimacy in India. The Waste Management Rules now direct municipalities to “promote recycling or reuse of segregated materials” and “ensure community participation in waste segregation”. This should improve the status and working conditions in this sector and upgrade recycling technologies.
1.What is recycled?
1.1 Thin-film plastic
Today, India’s landscapes are littered with so much thin plastic that many citizens desire a total ban on its use, with some initial success that fades with time. Goa had a spectacular clean-up campaign that left the organizers with two mountains of collected and unwanted plastic and no change at all in littering habits thereafter. Since a few hundred carry-bags are required to make a kilo of saleable scrap, it is simply not economical for waste-pickers to collect such ultra-thin waste, even if it is 20 micron or more, so it remains in the garbage in increasing quantities.
This will change as soon as higher prices for waste-pickers are possible, say Rs 5 per kg to a rag-picker. This may happen because the year 2002 has seen an exciting new use for such waste. The KK Process chops thin-film road-waste into tiny flakes, and its customized dosing machine can introduce this light fluff uniformly into viscous bitumen in hot-mix plants. Tests at Bangalore and the Indian Road Research Centre proved that resultant roads will have as much as three times better life and resistance to both heat, cold, rutting and cracking. This huge improvement costs only 6-8% more for initial road-laying. In Bangalore Municipal Corporation, a total of 20 km of road has already proved its superiority even before the monsoon, and only the slowness of changes in PWD tender-specifications is an obstacle to its widespread use.
1.2 PET bottles
Globalisation has flooded Indian cities with packaging that is theoretically recyclable but is not in practice recycled. PET bottles for soft drinks and mineral water are the biggest problem, as they end up in gutters and block surface and underground drains, causing flooding in low-lying areas and enormous economic loss annually, especially to the poorest who normally live in the worst-affected areas. The US and EU have stringent laws for take-back of such wastes (see www.gruener-punkt.de), so they dump their PET waste almost free in India for recycling mainly by IOC’s Futura Industries at Chennai. They recycle this and post-producer waste from PET bottle factories, leaving our own post-consumer waste uncollected and unrecycled, because we have no laws at present to prevent such waste-dumping into the country. This scenario is slowly changing :Geetanjali Industries, working directly with waste-pickers, is starting or supporting collection and flaking centers in many cities to supply to recyclers.
2.What is not recycled?
2.1 Tetrapaks
These popular and convenient multi-film juice cartons, made of cardboard-plastic-film-metal-foil combinations are hard to recycle conventionally. Worldwide, Tetrapaks are converted into a hardboard product in very many countries. In India, a pilot plant has been set up at Palghar (see www.ecolinkindia.com), but again only for post-producer waste to benefit the manufacturers. This plant is also far too expensive to set up in decentralized locations.
Presently there is no recycling market for Tetrapaks. There are already machines which pulp and strip the paper portion of the LDPE films for recycling them, but the foil layer interferes with recycling of either the paper or the plastic layers. It is worth exploring whether metallised biopolymer films can substitute for the existing layers, to make the whole multi-film product more recyclable. This application should be technically easy, because the bio-polymer is sandwiched between other layers and is not exposed to liquids or light.
2.2 Multi-film packaging, Metallised BOPP
Metallised-film packaging for biscuits, chips and namkeens are a similar major problem waste. The problem is made worse by hundreds of products packaged in tiny 5-10-gram pouches, mostly metallised or heavily printed, that are physically impossible to collect at all. If trials prove that BOPP (like unrecyclable Coke-Pepsi labels) or metallised BOPP can also improve the tackiness and durability of asphalt roads, a better street price may make them worth collecting. This will still leave the problem of trying to make micro-pack collection viable. Other than that, the best way of “capturing” the micro-packs is to give one paan parag free for say 20 empty pouches of any brand, or one shampoo free for every 20 cosmetic pouches of any brand.
Micro-packaging sachets are the most needed and most promising mass market for biopolymers. This is technically a difficult application that requires research, because these sachets are invariably hung up for display and exposed to light and perhaps rain. Their shelf life is also fairly long, posing a challenge to biopolymer designers. If anyone is interested in supplying eco-friendly and recyclable substitutes, progressive companies like Britannia and MTR at Bangalore are ready, willing and eager to try eco-friendly substitutes. A major hurdle that the industry must collectively address is the high duty structure on imported bio-alternatives.
2.3 Styrofoam
EPS or Expanded Poly-Styrene is rarely recycled in India, mainly because so much of this ends up as dispersed bulky waste thrown out from homes or offices that buy equipment packaged in this. .Worldwide, the foamed polystyrene packaging for TVs, computers, washing-machines etc is being replaced by pulp shapes, or ingeniously-folded cardboard shapes, or bubble-plastic, or, literally, packets of biodegradable popcorn. This is in response to a ban on the use of polystyrene packaging in 20 US States, with Europe following. Sony has already stopped using EPS packaging for its products. India has neither any recyclers of Styrofoam nor any laws yet to phase it out.
If biopolymers can be foamed, this is a worthwhile niche to explore.
2.4 Use-and-throw Catering Consumables
Tea-and-coffee cups, ice-cream and yoghurt cups etc are made of HIPS (high impact poly-styrene) which is recyclable. Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has purchased and installed in their own shed near their waste-yard, a machine from Mane Electricals at Pune which can recycle both thin carrybags as well as HIPS and EPS. The plant has been given to a Mahila Sangha for operation.
The problem here is not the recyclability, but the sheer bulkiness of scattered cups, which again are not worth a rag-picker’s effort to collect and sell. The problem is even worse for railway meals, where all such cups get thrown out the windows all along the tracks. This is an application that badly needs biodegradable plastics. It is technically very easy, as the products are exposed to light and liquids for a very brief period. It is also important to promote or even require the use of biopolymer disposables at tourist spots, in sanctuaries etc.
2.5 E-Waste from the Electronics Industry
Recycling mobile phones, computer hardware and the control panels in equipment like washing machines is an extremely complex recycling issue, and technically very difficult, because of the tremendous range of equipment involved and the huge number of different materials that are made into the composites which go into a single piece of equipment, or even a single chip. Currently, most e-Waste is burnt in bulk to recover the trace quantities of gold, silver, platinum, copper etc present in different components. In the process, the PVC coating on very thin connecting wires gets burnt too, forming deadly dioxins. Non-chlorinated substitutes for PVC insulating coatings do exist, but are not used because they are somewhat costlier than PVC. In spite of this, their use should be made mandatory in order to improve the eco-friendly recyclability of the products which use such micro-wires.
Biopolymers could be explored if any exist that have good insulating properties, are cost-effective, and can be disintegrated in acidic or alkaline media to recover the copper wires without burning.
Where NOT to use bio-polymers
A money-making racket is going on in cities like Pune, where degradable bags are required to be used for biomedical waste management. Since this is destined for almost immediate incineration, it is totally meaningless to insist on or require the use of either degradable or biodegradable bags. The bags only need to be chlorine-free like the usual LDPE or HDPE bags. Such unethical commercial exploitation needs to be put a stop to, otherwise it will give bio-polymers in general a bad name.
On the technical front, some research is currently going on to make PVCs degradable through the blending of biopolymer components. This is disastrous, and the question needs to be asked, Why PVC items need to be made degradable. PVCs and similar chlorine or halogen containing polymers, when in contact with organics in soil, generate dioxins in situ. This will get accelerated if the PVC is broken down over time into minute fragments. Presently there is hardly any PVC to be found in general municipal waste because (like milk pouches) it fetches a high price from waste-buyers (kabadiwalas) and is very extensively recycled.
Eco-Labelling needs reform
India launched ‘Ecomark’ as a voluntary eco-labelling scheme from 1992 onwards for upto 14 industry categories to encourage industry to adopt eco-friendly production methods and consumers to pursue sustainable consumption patterns. Unfortunately, not a single Indian or foreign industry has “volunteered” to sign up, for two reasons. Firstly, there is no deadline for compliance. Secondly, the Ecomark is administered by the BIS which is a notoriously bureaucratic arrangement that no industry wants, and they charge for their services per item sold, which can become excessive for bulk items.
There is need for streamlining and reforming the whole Ecomark procedure. Once it catches on, biopolymers can find a place in the packaging of Ecomark products, because their packaging aspects also figure in the granting of the Ecomark.
New Legislation
India urgently needs policy concepts and legal requirements like those in the EU countries and USA to prevent its cities from drowning in non-biodegradable waste. There is need for new legislation and market strategies in the Indian context to promote product stewardship, producer responsibility and waste minimization. Many lessons can be drawn and adapted from similar legislation around the world. It is only a matter of time before India is required to adopt waste minimization and ecofriendly packaging rules. So there is a need to study the US, EU and other world legislation on biopolymers and draft suitable legislation for consideration by our lawmakers from now.
See Also
http://www.almitrapatel.com/plastic_roads.htm

Main Menu