Page 9 - Plastics News July 2018

FROM THE EDITOR'S PEN

It’s back to square one

es, I say it’s back to square one and there are reasons. Despite the so called planning for
Ya ban on Plastics ( in Maharashtra) it has not worked and it will never work; for in the first
place it is based on wrong principle, also there is no other cost effective alternate available.
All of us have witnessed the plight of common citizen in their day-to-day life this month. Add
to the fact with no proper mechanism at the back-end to tackle the problem (of failure) the
state government has fallen flat on its face.
Just two days before the country’s first buyback scheme for PET bottles and milk pouches was
to be launched, the state government put it off (for at least a month) as most of them feel
that the plan is not feasible as there is no clarity on the rules.

This is what happens in the country wherein the amount of Plastic Waste is less than 03 percent
of the total Solid waste of 1500 tonnes per day. Logically, this does not deserve a ban but needs
an effective implementation of waste management system.
On the other hand, according to a recent order of Texas Supreme Court plastic bags cannot
be banned. Texas Supreme Court in its ruling said plastic bag bans are illegal because such a
move would violate the Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act. Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan
Hecht wrote, “We must take the statutes as they are written, and the one before us is written
quite clearly.”
Mr. Rajiv B.Tolat
Taking a leaf out of it we need to draw some reference for the betterment of the Indian
industry. What is needed is effective implementation of waste management than a ban. We’d
had already had it in place (but was never implemented) and now I am convinced the ban is
just a petty tool for some vested interest. And interestingly now, perhaps facing the music,
the State has made it mandatory to use waste plastic and industrially-recycled plastic in all
road construction and repair works. Had it been done earlier we would not have bad roads, to
name the Sion-Panvel highway that forces traffic to crawl, and many Mumbaikars would have
been saved from injuries travelling across the city.
A government resolution (GR) issued directed the use of plastic in asphalting works following a
successful experiment. The move, according to the government, will ensure roads with better
quality at lesser price and help tackle the waste plastic problem, which is likely to arise after
the ban. The GR said the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research too has found that such
roads are of better quality and less expensive.“All roads made of waste plastic will undergo a
quality test after every three months, and a report will be submitted to the State government
after a year,” the GR said. Following the government directions, use of waste plastic in
asphalting work will now have a special mention in road tenders, and the chief engineer of
the respective area will be tasked with supervising junior officers on whether they are using
waste plastic or not.
The Central government through a notification dated November 9, 2015, had made use of
waste plastic mandatory in the upper layer of the asphalt road built by hot mix technique. The
State PWD department on February 2, 2016, had asked its regional offices to use waste plastic
in building roads on an experimental basis. On May 25, the chief secretary had informed the
Prime Minister via videoconferencing about the better quality of asphalt roads constructed by
mixing waste plastic and that the technique is one of the answers to tackle the plastic problem.

The question remains what made them to ban Plastics- petty Politics?
Rajiv B.Tolat
Hon. Editor
publication@aipma.net

9 July 2018 Plastics News