New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) on Saturday issued an advisory to States and Union Territories (UT) to phase out Single-use Plastic (SUP) by June 30.
In its advisory, the ministry has asked States and UTs to take up a range of activities to fulfill the mandate to ban SUP by the deadline on June 30. The States and UTs have been asked to conduct large scale cleaning and plugging drives, with special emphasis on plastic waste collection, as well as large scale tree plantation drive, with participation of all citizens, students, voluntary organisation, self help groups, local NGOs among others.
Under the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, currently being implemented by MoHUA, plastic waste management, including elimination of SUP-is a crucial area of focus. Under the mission, every ULB is required to adopt 100 per cent source segregation of waste, and have access to a material recovery facility (MRF) for sorting the dry waste (including plastic waste) into further fractions for recycling and for processing into value added products, thereby reducing to a minimum the amount of plastic and dry waste ending up in dumpsites or water bodies.
According to official data, 2,591 ULBs (out of 4,704) have already reported notification of SUP ban as per the direction of the Central Pollution Control Board and MoEF&CC. "ULBs need to identify SUP 'hotspots' and eliminate them, while parallelly leveraging the support of state pollution control boards and forming special enforcement squads, conducting surprise inspections and imposing heavy fines and penalties on defaulters, for enforcing SUP bans.
As per Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2021, the manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sales and use of carry bags made of virgin of recycled plastic less than seventy five microns has been banned with effect from September 30, 2021 as opposed to fifty microns recommended earlier under PMW Rules, 2016. States and UTs have also been advised to enter MoUs with nearby cement plants or other industrial units as well to ensure that a part of the plastic waste generated is used either as alternative fuel in cement plants, or for road construction purposes.
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