How Industries, Chemicals Ministry Influenced India’s Plastic Rules

As one of the world’s leading producers of plastic waste--India’s choices could tip the scales on any global treaty. But the road to Geneva is littered with decades of industry influence and diluted promises.

In the second and third week of August, countries are set to engage in an intense round of negotiations on the Global Plastic Treaty, the United Nations-led effort to tackle plastic pollution.

Previous negotiations in Busan in 2024 ended in stalemate, with India and other petrochemical producing countries refusing to set limits on plastic manufacture. In Busan, India argued in favour of “downstream measures” such as recycling and reuse, on the grounds that restrictions on manufacture would threaten millions of workers dependent on plastics.

This stance wasn’t born in a vacuum, but was shaped by persistent lobbying by plastic manufacturers and industry lobbies, and driven by the petroleum and industries ministries in New Delhi.

We examined over 5,600 pages of minutes of meetings, notes, reports, and submissions obtained from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) through the Right to Information (RTI) Act and uncovered a clear pattern: plastic manufacturers and the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals (DCPC) have played an outsized role in determining India’s approach to plastics pollution.

This two-part series explores how India’s plastic legislation evolved and, in many cases, was diluted, under industry pressure. In this first part, we trace how stringent plastic bans were softened, and how state-level attempts to enforce strict norms were superseded by the Union government at the behest of plastic manufacturing associations.

The curious case of plastic bans

India’s current global stance on plastics is the culmination of a two-decade-long shift in discourse. It started with The Recycled Plastics Manufacture and Usage Rules, 1999, which sought to limit the manufacture of plastic carry bags. Following this, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) set about broadening the mandate. Committees, including those formed by the Supreme Court, soon began recommending even stricter rules to deal with plastic waste.

The CPCB proposed banning laminates and multi-layered packaging, which comprises layers of plastic, paper, aluminium and other materials. These are ubiquitous in everything from chips to shampoo pouches, juices to chocolate wrappers, and are one of the biggest sources of plastic waste that is hard to recycle. Also on the proposed ban list were plastic containers, now ubiquitous in food delivery. CPCB also sought to place the financial responsibility of collection and recycling on plastics manufacturers.

The new law would be called “Plastic Manufacture and Usage Rules”, emphasizing restrictions on plastics manufacture.

Internal notes show vehement objections from the chemicals ministry, which governs production of plastics. The main objection was the name itself, which the ministry felt unfairly targeted what the DCPC called a “wonder material”. Buying back plastic, they argued, was “impractical and extremely difficult”--this, even as Europe and developed countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) were implementing such measures.

Plastics manufacturers echoed these concerns. “Plastics are very useful and eco-friendly…Shopping without polythene bags, picnics without disposable glass, our kitchen without rows of plastic jars, is just unthinkable,” the All India Plastics Manufacturing Association (AIPMA), which represents over 22,000 plastics manufacturers, said in 2002. For them, the problem was not plastics themselves, but “waste management and littering habits of people”.

O.P. Ratra, a plastics industry advisor, has been on multiple committees (including the 1996 National Plastic Waste Management Task Force). “I have consistently advocated the view that plastic itself is not the core problem but littering is,” he told IndiaSpend. “International organisations were intensifying their campaigns against plastics. But I have worked to show the other side of the argument.”

In governmental meetings, he found an ally in the DCPC. “They have been a supporter of these views and have actively represented our concerns," he said.

These objections, along with DCPC’s 2007 petrochemical policy that sought to boost plastic manufacture, had an impact on the government. CPCB and MoEF diluted their positions. The draft “Plastic Manufacture and Usage Rules” became the draft “Plastics (Manufacture, Usage and Waste Management)” and eventually, by 2011, when the Rules were finally notified, the word “manufacture” was entirely removed.

The many dilutions of the single-use plastics ban

This influence over environmental policy didn’t stop there. Take the ban on single-use plastics (SUPs)--that is, items like plastic bags, plastic cutlery, ice cream sticks, plastic ear-buds and others that are used just once. In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would be free of SUPs by July 1, 2022. In March 2019, India piloted a resolution on single-use plastic products pollution at the 4th United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA)--an initiative that earned international praise with Erik Solheim, the head of UN Environment, saying that India has “political motivation, turned into practical action” that can “inspire the world and ignite real change”.

The announcement was followed by the Plastic Waste Management (PWM) Rules 2021 that banned the manufacture, distribution, stocking, sale and use of 19 specific SUPs. However, experts pointed out the large gap between India’s global talk and domestic action, and noted that there were too many exceptions to the ban.

The ban is skewed against the smallest segment of the plastic industry, which is the one that needs the maximum hand holding in order to transition away from single-use plastic, experts told IndiaSpend in October 2022. India needs to make the big players accountable for their share of plastic pollution, we had reported.

The 2019 Action Plan, circulated within ministries, noted that SUPs comprised 43% of plastic consumption--but the final policy banned a mere 2-3% of the total plastic produced in India. How did this happen? Through myriad industry-friendly cuts.

From the outset, its ambit was determined by plastic associations. The selection of Single-Use Plastics to be banned was decided by DCPC’s expert committee, formed in 2019. Of the nine members, just two worked on environmental regulations (that is, CPCB officers), with the rest being from other government departments. Fourteen associations and organisations linked to plastic industries were represented in the discussions, while the remaining five were government ministries, research institutions and non-government organisations.

The committee weighed the ‘utility’ of plastics (hygiene of the product, safety, essentiality, social impact or convenience and economic impact) against environmental impact (collectibility of the product), recyclability, possibility of waste to energy and other “End of life” solutions, environmental impact of alternates and littering propensity. Health and ecological impacts were not considered.

Economic fallout took precedence over environmental or health impacts. Only 12 low-utility, hard-to-recycle products were targeted, sparing widely used but highly polluting plastics like small sachets on the grounds that they scored high on the “utility” index. These criteria, incidentally, were similar to those presented to the committee by AIPMA, whose stated objective is to promote the plastics industry.

Satish Sinha, associate director of Toxics Link, an NGO that works on waste and chemical issues, was among the stakeholders who met the committee in 2019. He recalls that the primary criteria used was “the economic fallout” of phasing out plastics. “A lot of the items on the shelves of department stores were not considered because if these were banned suddenly or had to be replaced by costly alternatives, then it is the consumers that will have to bear the cost. These recommendations were acceptable to all stakeholders at the time. We felt it was a starting point in the conversation.”

DCPC’s expert committee report had shown that rigid containers were widely used in food delivery but were of low utility, were difficult to collect and had relatively low recyclability. It pointed out that there were alternatives, including aluminium boxes.

The environment ministry tried to expand the ban to include rigid containers but industry associations pushed back, claiming these were “multi-use.” The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) agreed, and containers were dropped from the banned list.

Similarly, bans were proposed on non-woven carry bags which are made from plastic fibres. At the time, Maharashtra and several other states had already banned such bags. Almost immediately, several associations and manufacturers wrote in claiming these bags were considered “textiles”, and that they were recyclable and reusable. Even the Prime Minister’s Office, in September 2019, forwarded a representation from the Ahmedabad-based Indian Non-Woven Fabric Manufacturer Association against the ban.

Eventually, a diluted restriction was notified in the 2021 PWM rules, whereby only non-woven carry bags less than 60 grams per square meter (GSM) would be banned. This threshold was lower than DCPC’s own expert committee, which recommended the “phasing out as early as possible” of non-woven bags that are less than 80 GSM. Documents from CPCB show that plastic manufacturers agreed to this lower cut-off as they could continue manufacturing without any disruption.

Non-woven bags continue to be a problem for states, where they are being sold as cloth bags or eco-friendly alternatives to plastics.

The great multi-layered plastics escape

The intended ban of multi-layered plastics is another case study in policy dilution due to external influence. CPCB, which had long advocated the ban of non-recyclable plastics in MLPs, noted in 2012 that MLPs are a major portion of the 0.56 million tonnes of non-recyclable plastic waste that ends up in the waste stream annually.

DCPC however had repeatedly sought to scuttle the ban, claiming that there was no alternative manufacturing and warning that processed food projects--which are often wrapped in various types of plastic films and MLPs--would be off our shelves if the ban came into force.

Eventually, the CPCB prevailed through the Plastics Waste Management Rules in 2016: “Manufacture and use of non-recyclable multilayered plastic, if any, should be phased out in two years’ time.”

The victory, however, was short-lived. As the deadline approached, objections poured in with manufacturers and product companies claiming that even if the plastic was not recyclable, it could be incinerated or converted to oil to generate electricity.

“The solution to the environmental threat posed by post-consumer MLP waste is not a complete ban on their use,” said the Indian Council of Food and Agriculture (ICFA), an apex body representing several large companies in the agriculture and consumer food processing sectors.

ICFA wrote to the ministry in February 2018, a month before the ban on non-recyclable MLP was to take effect: “A possible solution to counter this issue and to enhance the waste management effort is to phase out materials which are both non-recyclable and non-energy recoverable in a phased-out manner.”

In March that year, the MoEF&CC issued a gazette notification modifying the ban to only MLPs which are “non-recyclable or non-energy recoverable or with no alternate use”.

Influence to peddle dangerous technology

Industry lobbying didn’t just shape bans--it also promoted questionable solutions.

In March 2018 Mansukh Mandaviya, the Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers, wrote to the environment ministry that after deliberations with the Oxo-Biodegradable Plastics Federation (which represent companies that manufacture additives that can be added to plastic and help it break down faster), he found that it was a “very good technology” that would help manage waste.

At the same time, scientists and activists globally were calling for its ban as these additives break down plastics into even more dangerous microplastics. In 2019, the European Union banned the additives, followed by similar action in other countries. Documents show that in 2022, India’s environment ministry acknowledged receiving several comments seeking its ban, but no action was taken.

Oxo-degradable products continued to be marketed in India as “eco-friendly”. It was only in 2023 that the CPCB mandated that these products needed to be registered and tested before it was sold.

States vs Union govt: Who gets the last word?

The industry’s influence extended to the balance of power between states and the Union government. Internal documents reveal that industries influenced central policy to supersede state laws that dealt with plastic management.

In March 2018, four months before Prime Minister Modi’s speech to the UN, Maharashtra banned a large array of single-use products including carry bags, containers, cutlery and others. Maharashtra became the 18th state to either completely ban SUPs or enforce bans in select eco-sensitive regions. Manufacturers unsuccessfully challenged the Maharashtra ban in the Bombay High Court.

The plastics industry then sent a flurry of representations to the MoEF&CC complaining about the state bans and pointing to the stringent nature of the state laws, compared to the relaxations and exemptions given by the Union government. For instance, Maharashtra had banned all plastics less than 50 microns, including multi-layer packaging that had been allowed by the Centre.

MoEF&CC received representations for bans and restrictions in other states as well. The Indian Beverages Association objected to the ban of PET bottles of less than two litres in volume in the eco-sensitive Andaman and Nicobar Islands (as no waste processing facility exists on the Islands).

The Indian Compostable Polymers Association complained that Maharashtra and Karnataka had banned compostable plastic bags despite the Centre allowing them.

In July 2018, the Madhya Pradesh Plastic Traders Association called for uniform regulations to counter these state bans. This motto was repeated by several other manufacturers and consumer goods companies.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), India’s largest business association, called for consistency in rules. The aim, they said, was to balance Swachh Bharat, the government’s flagship sanitation programme, with the “ease of doing business”.

Samsung India Electronics also called for greater centralisation, arguing that dealing with multiple local bodies was “very costly and highly time consuming”.

By August 2021, the Plastic Waste Management, 2021 Rules effectively took away the powers of the State. “Any notification prohibiting the manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale, and use (of carry bags, plastic sheets, multilayered packaging and single-use plastic) issued after this notification shall come into force after the expiry of ten years from the date of its publication,” it stated.

“It amounts to a moratorium on policy-making, restricting the ability of state governments to institute policies to curb plastic use for 10 years,” said Satyarupa Shekhar, former coordinator of the #breakfreefromplastic movement in the Asia Pacific region. She believed this moratorium will likely be extended.

The MoEF&CC’s stance represents an inexplicable change from its own position adopted a few years earlier. In early 2016, the Plastic Manufacturers and Traders Association sought a uniform liberal policy after Punjab had enforced a strict plastic ban. The environment ministry, which was drafting the 2016 Plastic management rules at that time, had rejected the suggestion, saying: “States can have stringent norms.”

These policy twists and turns didn’t just stay on paper. They set the stage for India’s current hardline stance in global talks. As delegates gather in Geneva, the question that will be foregrounded is: Will India stick to its industry-friendly script, or is a plot twist on the horizon?

IndiaSpend wrote to the MoEF&CC and CPCB for comment on the influence of industries and the DCPC in diluting plastic regulations, and their stance on exemptions of MLPs and other items from the SUP ban, which are now creating issues in recycling, among other concerns. We will update this story when we receive a response.

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