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At the Road to Antalya: Zero Waste as Climate Action forum in Türkiye, zero waste was framed not just as waste management, but as a climate and resource security strategy.
The discussions highlighted the need to move beyond recycling and address the root causes of waste, including product design, overproduction, reuse systems and producer responsibility.
India’s expanding petrochemical sector raises questions about whether waste policy can remain focused mainly on collection, recycling and end-of-life management.
The article argues that zero waste can help India reduce dependence on virgin resources, strengthen local livelihoods and advance climate goals.
As global discussions move beyond recycling towards reducing production itself, India’s continued investment in petrochemical expansion raises difficult questions about climate resilience, resource security and plastic pollution.
At the Road to Antalya: Zero Waste as Climate Action forum in Türkiye, attended by delegates from about 183 countries, one message echoed across plenaries, technical sessions and panel discussions: zero waste is no longer being understood simply as a waste management strategy. It is being framed as a climate strategy, a resource efficiency strategy and, importantly, a strategy for transforming systems of production and consumption.
In his opening remarks, Samed Ağırbaş, President of the Zero Waste Forum and climate high-level champion for 31st Conference of the Parties (COP 31) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), captured the idea succinctly: “Zero waste is not just about waste management and recycling. It is about managing our production and consumption patterns.”
The statement may appear obvious. Yet it signals a significant departure from the way waste has traditionally been addressed: through collection, disposal and recycling. Increasingly, policymakers, international organisations and civil society actors are focusing on the scale of waste generated at source and the systems that drive it.
This shift has important implications for India.
For years, waste management discussions have focused on improving segregation, increasing recycling rates and expanding disposal infrastructure. These remain important, but discussions in Antalya repeatedly highlighted their limits.
One of the strongest interventions came from Neil Khor of UN-Habitat, who said: “Landfill and incineration are not zero waste.”
His observation reflects a growing consensus within the global zero waste movement: waste management alone cannot solve the intertwined crises of climate change, resource depletion and plastic pollution.
Instead, zero waste is increasingly being viewed through the lenses of justice, community participation and circularity. The emphasis is moving upstream, from managing waste after it is generated to preventing waste from being produced in the first place.
This was particularly evident during discussions on the Global Plastics Treaty, where participants argued that tackling plastic pollution requires attention to product design, toxic additives, reuse systems and producer responsibility. Recycling remains important, but it cannot compensate for continually rising production.
Zero waste challenges the long-standing assumption that economic growth and increasing material consumption must go hand in hand.
Participants at the forum repeatedly stressed that reducing unnecessary production, expanding reuse systems and extending product lifespans are essential components of any credible zero waste strategy.
Such arguments are increasingly shaping global plastics negotiations, as governments confront mounting evidence that current levels of plastic production are environmentally unsustainable. The debate is no longer restricted to how plastics are disposed of. It increasingly concerns how much plastic is produced, who benefits from that production, and who bears the environmental, social and health costs.
For countries such as India, these discussions arrive at a critical moment.
Even as global conversations begin to focus on reducing material throughput, India is pursuing an ambitious expansion of its petrochemical sector. Large refinery-petrochemical complexes, industrial corridors and new investments are being promoted as engines of economic growth. Industry projections anticipate significant increases in domestic plastic production over the coming decades.
At the same time, public policy discussions, including India’s new Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, continue to focus mainly on collection, recycling and end-of-life management. These interventions are necessary, but they rarely address the upstream drivers of waste generation.
This creates a growing contradiction.
The concern is not only environmental. It is also economic. Large-scale investments create long-term dependencies. Once infrastructure is built, there is a strong incentive to maximise production to recover costs and generate returns. Such investments can lock economies into resource-intensive pathways that become increasingly difficult to reverse.
Recent developments in West Asia provide a timely caution, highlighting another dimension often missing from discussions on plastics and petrochemicals: resource security.
India remains heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels and petrochemical feedstocks. Any disruption in global supply chains can affect manufacturing costs, industrial production and domestic markets.
Instability in the region highlights the vulnerability of building economic systems around imported raw materials. Yet these events also point towards an alternative pathway.
One of the most overlooked aspects of zero waste is that it can reduce dependence on virgin resources. Every tonne of material that is reused, repaired, composted or recycled displaces some demand for newly extracted or imported resources.
Viewed through this lens, zero waste is not merely a waste management intervention. It is also a strategy for improving resource resilience.
One of the most compelling discussions at Antalya focused on data and indicators for zero waste systems. Participants emphasised the importance of measuring not only waste generation and recycling rates, but also material recovery, emissions reductions and social outcomes.
The broader message was clear: waste should not be seen as an inevitable by-product of development. It is also a sign of uncontrolled and excessive production.
For India, this perspective is particularly relevant. Organic waste constitutes nearly 61 per cent of municipal waste streams in the country. Diverting biodegradable waste towards composting and biogas production can generate renewable energy, reduce dependence on synthetic fertilisers and improve soil health.
India already has local examples of how this shift can work in practice. In Chennai, the Green Chennai Initiative proposes a people-centric roadmap towards a zero-waste city as an alternative to waste-to-energy incineration. It also addresses the root causes of waste generation, including single-use plastics.
This shows that zero waste is not just about managing municipal discards. It is about reducing waste at source and redesigning the systems that produce it.
Similarly, stronger systems for repair, reuse and material recovery can reduce demand for virgin plastics and petrochemical feedstocks. These interventions are often discussed in environmental terms, but they are equally relevant to economic resilience and resource security.
In an era of geopolitical uncertainty, reducing dependence on imported raw materials may prove as important as reducing emissions.
For India, zero waste presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
The challenge is to reconsider development pathways that depend on expanding petrochemical production. The opportunity is to use zero waste to strengthen resource security, reduce import dependence, support local livelihoods and advance climate goals.
The future of zero waste begins much earlier than landfills or recycling facilities. It starts with choices about what and how much we produce, and whether economies can consume fewer virgin resources while delivering greater social and environmental benefits.
Vishvaja Sambath is an environmental health researcher and campaigner associated with the Centre for Financial Accountability. Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran is a senior research associate with the Centre for Financial Accountability. Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.