What plastic waste import ban? This loophole leads to influx of PET bottles

A legal loophole is allowing an influx of PET bottles into the country, despite a ban on the import of plastic waste, a New Delhi-based environmental organisation has claimed.

While China’s ban on importing plastic waste has forced other countries to step up recycling efforts, India has become one of the countries whose plastic waste imports have increased “substantially”.
An organisation called the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Smriti Manch (PDUSM) has claimed India’s imports of plastic scraps from China, Japan, Italy and Malawi for recycling and imports of PET bottle scrap and flakes has quadrupled. It says that in the fiscal year 2016-17, the imports were 12,000 tonnes. This figure grew to 48,000 tonnes in FY 2017-18. The organisation also claims that India has already imported 25,000 million tonnes (MT) in the first three months of FY 2018-19.
India banned the import of plastic waste – particularly PET bottles –in 2015 because of an inability to recycle them. Experts suggest that most of the plastic waste does not make it to the recycling centres due to lack of an efficient waste segregation and inadequate collection.
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