PLASTIC WASTE PROBLEMS REMAIN UNRESOLVED
A No Plastics in the Environment PRESS RELEASE
February 16, 2002

Today was the final meeting of the Justice Ranganath Mishra
Plastic waste handling committee. The near total lack of public
participation in the MishraCommittee's deliberations on the
country's plastics problem has come in for strong criticism by
citizens' groups from around the country who have came together
under the banner NoPE (No Plastics in the Environment). "We fear
that the committee's work, paid for by public money but without
public participation, will neither clean up the plastics industry's
image, nor do anything to address the problem of plastic wastes,"
said NoPE in a petition to Justice Mishra.

The group has conditionally welcomed chairperson Justice (retd)
Ranganath Mishra's intentions to host public hearings. They have
called for launching a broad-based process of public
deliberations on the plastics problem, and have requested the
Chairperson to not use the draft recommendations as the basis
of the public hearings. NoPE has also decided to launch a
Citizen's Task Force on the Plastics Problem to evolve a
progressive and sustainable policy on plastics.

The Mishra committee comprises several Government
officials and one NGO - the Indian Centre for Plastics in the
Environment, an agency promoted by Reliance and other
members of the plastics industry. ICPE's website declares its
intention - "For sustaining an environment-friendly image of
plastics."

The Ministry of Environment also continued to remain anti-
environment and against public health by promoting incinerators
and other combustion technologies which are known to be
seriously polluting. Interestingly, the Environment Ministry opposed
a ban on the import of plastic wastes into India.

According to NoPE, the recommendations fall severely short of
addressing issues critical to dealing with the plastics problem. In
the statement submitted to Justice Mishra, NoPE noted the
following shortfalls:

1. No mention of plastics use reduction. Reduction, not
recycling and reuse, ranks first in the hierarchy of
discard management.
2. No mention of regulations, phase outs of poison plastics
like PVC.
3. Does not take into account that while we are planning to
deal with local wastes, the country is being flooded with
foreign wastes, and the industry is expanding its
production capacity.
4. No mention of plastics labeling and/or labeling and
phase-out of toxic additives in plastics.
5. Views the problem of the ragpickers and "recycling" unit
workers, most of whom are children, only as a problem
of occupational hazard rather than respecting the right of
a child to be a child.

However, at the end of today's meeting, the Committee agreed to
ban the import of plastics, introduce plastics labelling and push for
producer responsibility in taking care of plastics from cradle to
grave.

NoPE is an alliance of individuals and citizens' groups who have
come together to push for a plastics policy that emphasizes use
reduction, substitution with traditional material, extended producer
responsibility and labelling, among other things. NoPE has
members in New Delhi, Thiruvananthapuram, Vizag, Hyderabad,
Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Bhopal, Bangalore, Gandhinagar and
Vadodara.