COVID-19 has accelerated plastic packaging due to a rise in e-commerce; ensuring its safe disposal and recycling requires involving everyone on board
Packaging has always been a problem for the world. The plastic used in packaging of goods or as carry bags has entered waterbodies and has eventually made its way to the sea, wreaking havoc. It has even entered babies’ poop.
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has only accelerated the use of plastic packaging due to the huge rise in e-commerce transactions. However, disposing the plastic used in packaging safely and ensuring its proper recycling will take a combined effort from all stakeholders involved, experts have said.
That is because the neighbourhood waste collectors have their own set of challenges to grapple with. Every bit of packaging does not make business sense for them. Hence, they are selective about what they want to pick up.
Second, e-commerce sites claim to have taken significant steps in the move towards sustainable packaging but there is still a long way to go. This reporter put out a tweet a year ago asking Amazon.com, Inc to collect packaging from customers and recycle or designate a collection point.
This was the response:
We get your concern here. However, we have shared your comments as feedback internally. Appreciate your understanding.
A burgeoning market
The e-commerce space has been expanding steadily over the past few years in India. The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed this trend, Rohith Ramanujam, chief executive of the Vamshadhara Paper Mills Limited – Unit Chennai, told this reporter.
The e-commerce segment of the packaging market was estimated at $451.4 million in 2019. It is forecast to reach $975.4 million by 2025, according to Ramanujam.
Prabhakar Venneti, divisional head of marketing, ITC Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division, said India was on its way to becoming the third-largest online retail market globally by 2030.
This is next only to the US and China.
He added that in spite of the pandemic, the domestic growth in 2021 in this market was expected to increase by over 45 per cent over last year. The surge in online sales would translate into an increased need for packaging material in the country.
Venneti added:
It is essential to strike the perfect balance and proactively spearhead sustainable and eco-friendly packaging and management of post-consumer packaging waste.
E-commerce sites have given some thought to the concept of sustainability. But there is still a long way to go.
An Amazon spokesperson told this reporter:
We are committed to minimising our carbon footprint and reducing environmental impact by developing plastic alternatives, eliminating single use plastic to the extent possible, reducing packaging material consumption and as a result waste and scaling up packaging free shipping (PFS).
PFS is a sustainable packaging solution in which customer orders are shipped in their original packaging with no secondary or additional packaging.
The spokesperson added that other alternatives included replacing plastic bubble wraps and air pillows with paper cushions, using 100 per cent plastic-free and bio-degradable paper tape to seal shipments and doing away with thin cling film.
He said all packaging boxes of his organisation were made from 100 per cent recyclable content and were fully recyclable.
Mahendra Pratap Singh, head, Sustainability and Social Responsibility, Flipkart Group, said his organisation had initiated the following steps for more sustainable packaging:
Customers too
However, Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh, deputy programme manager, Municipal Solid Waste at Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment, highlighted some key areas of concern.
He said:
These companies are not willing to take accountability for the packaging material sent along with products shipped. The plastic packaging mostly has the branding of the ecommerce company, irrespective of the origin of the actual product. This makes them liable to collect all the plastic packaging that they have been putting out in the market.
The same logistic network that connected small local dealers / partners to deliver the product at customers’ doorstep, failed to work in the reverse direction, Singh added.
The company that puts the packaging in the market along with its product, is liable to collect back the plastic. That is according to the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) of the Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016.
The second point of concern according to Singh was the quality of the plastics used for packaging. Most of it falls in the category of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), Low-density Polyethylene (LDPE) and Polypropylene (PP).
Singh noted:
In some cases, these are either reused by the consumers for a certain period of time before being discarded into the dustbin. They reach the waste collector who takes out the relatively valuable PET and PP while still leaving the low value LDPE in the waste stream to be disposed of at the dumpsite. Informal recyclers use unscientific methods, adding to the damage.
Customers thus have a shared responsibility in disposing waste, according to experts.
The consumer could help the ecology by selling corrugated boxes, thereby bringing waste paper into the value chain, according to Ramanujam. After this, it would find its own way to the recycling plant, owing to the commercial value it held every step of the way.
In the rare instance of the boxes landing up in landfills, they would degrade themselves as they were fully degradable, he added.
Venneti added that the paper collected by raddiwalas or waste collectors, was bought by waste paper traders, who in turn sold it to paper mills for recycling for packaging and other applications.
“As a packaging material, paper has an edge over the others. It is made from a natural, renewable resource and is 100 per cent recyclable,” he noted. Packaging waste that was not segregated and recycled, ended up in landfills, adding to environmental stress.
“Therefore, source segregation and responsible disposal are two main mantras,” he said.
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