This is a companion to the book on understanding global issues around plastics.
When a book is created on a gloomy subject, even if done in a playful manner, one faces the question if there's nothing positive about it. Hence, a book on interesting and meaningful efforts in the country to address the menacing issue of plastics. Well, efforts on minimising the use of plastics are small, isolated and left to individual choice. But some of the efforts in collection of used plastics, reuse and recycling are interesting and big.
This book outlines the plastics production and state of the industry in India, the journey to the dumpyard after end-of-life, and ten important initiatives to minimise the plastic waste. Some of them are community efforts, some are large scale interventions like reusing plastic waste for making new roads, or municipal level interventions to collect and segregate plastics. There are also efforts in the social entrepreneur sector as well as research and product development recycling plastics by premier scientific institution.
These are not the 'ten best' efforts, and there must be more initiatives in the country. It will be an interesting task to make a compendium of such initiatives. Also, these stories should not make us complacent as the problem in hand is too big. Also, there is a question that we have faced if reuse and recycling can be called a solution to the problem of plastics pollution pollution. No, it can't be a solution, as the plastics still remain in the system, as indestructible as before. But it postpones the dumping. This the best we can do till we find a solution for not using plastics. But that will definitely need a major overhauling of our current economic system of production and consumption.