Single Use Plastic Ban Notification

Single Use Plastic Ban Notification

India defined single-use plastic in an August 12, 2021 notification as “plastic item intended to be used once for the same purpose before being disposed of or recycled”. In the same notification, the Union Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change had devised a phase-out plan for 21 select single-use items.

India’s ban on select single-use plastic items comes into effect from July 1, 2022. Although this is the country’s first attempt to regulate plastics available in the market, it will send out the wrong message if we say “India is banning single-use plastic”. This is because even after July1, the Indian market will continue to sell a gamut of single-use plastic items like soft drinks and mineral water bottles, all products sold in multi-layered packaging, among others. These plastic items perfectly fit the bill for single-use plastic going by the definition India has adopted.

Single-Use Plastic Ban Notification

The Indian government has tried to identify a handful of problematic plastics, which are low-utility and have high littering potential, from the bucket of single-use plastic commodity list and give the industry a reasonable time to phase them out.So, in no stretch of imagination is India banning all single-use plastic items. The plastic items proposed for the ban are:

1. Earbuds with plastic sticks
2. Plastic sticks for balloons
3. Plastic flags
4. Candy sticks made of plastic
5. Ice-cream sticks made of plastic
6. Thermocol (Expanded polystyrene) for decoration
7. Plates made of plastic
8. Cups made of plastic
9. Glasses made of plastic
10. Forks made of plastic
11. Spoons made of plastic
12. Knives made of plastic
13. Straws made of plastic
14. Trays made of plastic
15. Stirrers made of plastic
16. Wrapping or packaging films around sweet boxes
17. Wrapping or packaging films around invitation cards
18. Wrapping or packaging films around cigarette packets
19. Plastic or PVC banners less than 100 micron thickness
20. Plastic carry bags less than 75 micron thickness ( this will be revised to 120 micron thickness from 31st December 2022)
21. Non-woven plastic with less than 60 GSM (Grams per square metre)

You can download the Single-Use Plastic Ban Notification PDF using the link given below.