Citizens audit plastic waste from waterbodies

A large portion of plastic waste is packaging material. Between May 18 and 20, clean-ups were organised at Adyar riverbank near Srinivasapuram, Broken Bride in Besant Nagar, Chitlapakkam Lake and Pallavaram Lake. 

The waste collected will be brand audited to fix responsibility for plastic packaging recycling. The exercise was carried out by Citizen consumer and civic Action Group (CAG) in the city (apart from seven other metros in the country) along with Arappor Iyakkam. 

Kripa R, a researcher at CAG, said that the idea behind the initiative was to fix corporate producers’ responsibility for their packaging, ahead of the World Environment Day on June 5, where India is the global host and the theme is ‘beat plastic pollution’. 

“The narrative and messages are directed towards the consumers, who are the last and weakest link in the chain,” said Kripa. 

“While consumers are responsible, just directing them to change their behaviour is not a holistic or a sustainable solution. Plastic waste is not just a consumer problem but also involves corporate accountability,” she added. 

The Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 and Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016 hold corporate businesses accountable and extend the polluters responsibility to the products they manufacture, mandating them to have a system to collect back their products, the researcher said. “The idea is to question the corporate’s responsibility. 

Consumers are the bottom-most in the power pyramid and are trying to push back on the corporates, asking them if they are ready to strictly implement a system to collect their waste?” said Kripa. The waste collected will be divided under the following categories: branded plastic, unbranded plastic, textile, rubber, glass and metal, and polysterene. 

“We will count the number of brands which are responsible for the packaging and create a global evidence of the pollution by these brands, through the numbers on the ground,” said Kripa, adding that a report with the findings will be released in New Delhi on June 4, pushing for policy changes. 

David Manohar, an activist with Arappor, who was involved in the clean-up of Pallavaram and Chitlapakkam lakes on Sunday, said that apart from branded plastic, there was a huge quantity of unbranded plastic of low quality – lesser than 40 micron, which in principle, is banned in the state. 

“The law is not enforced properly – if the authorities did their work, the plastic problem could be checked. Without this, low quality plastic is rampant and choking our waterbodies,” said the activist.