NT NETWORK
Panaji
The Union Ministry of Environment’s proposed rules for ‘extended producer responsibility’ (EPR) for collecting back plastic waste after use by consumers have received 160 comments from various stakeholders and organisations.
These comments are currently being compiled and reviewed by the Ministry and subsequently the EPR framework would be finalised.
The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had released the draft Uniform Framework for Extended Producer Responsibility (Under Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016) on June 26, 2020, seeking comments from stakeholders by July 31.
The comments have been inter alia received from Central Pollution Control Board, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, organisations working in the area of waste management, industries, industry associations, civil society organisations and citizens.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 scenario, the comments from the stakeholders have been received beyond the last date.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had directed the environment ministry on September 10 to finalise and enforce the EPR guidelines as far as possible within three months.
The draft rules offer three options to producers, importers and brand owners to adopt depending on the quantum of plastic being produced to implement EPR.
These models are ‘fee based model’ wherein producers pay a fee into a central corpus that would be spent towards managing the waste; or ‘PRO-based model’ in which the companies pay for establishing producer responsibility organisations (PROs) to collect and manage post-consumer plastic waste.
The third model is Plastic Credit Model whereby producers buy credits from a system that would be established to offset the plastic waste they generate. The settlement of EPR credit shall be done through online portal.
While adopting any one of the model or both the models at the same time, the producers/importers and brand owners need to register themselves with the national registry.
The uniform framework for EPR has envisaged for creation of national registration and database repository through which online registration of various stakeholders can be done.
The draft rules propose to give manufacturers five years to achieve waste management targets, starting with 30 per cent and moving up to 90 per cent in the fifth year after the rules are notified.
The draft rule also has provision of imposing penalties on the producer/importer/brand owner for the portion of waste not collected against the targeted collection. This fee will be used for creating infrastructure for plastic waste management.
