India is Banning Single-Use Plastic and the Rest of the World Should Too

During opening remarks, Modi declared the “time has come” for “the world to say goodbye” to single-use plastic, calling on world leaders to follow India’s lead in banning the plastic.

“My Government has announced that India will put an end to single-use plastic in the coming years,” Modi said.

As India gears up to take over the presidency of the CoP, the prime minister said the country “looks forward to making an effective contribution.”

During an Independence Day speech given on August 15, Modi urged citizens and government agencies to “take the first big step” in freeing India of single-use plastics. The prime minister, who is leading efforts to eliminate single-use plastics by 2022, announced a ban on six items on October 2 of this year, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth.

Those six items include plastic bags, straws, cups, plates, small bottles, and some sachets.

“The ban will be comprehensive and will cover manufacturing, usage and import of such items,” an anonymous official said.

The sweeping ban is expected to cut India’s annual consumption of plastic by five percent. The country’s current consumption is estimated to be about 14 million tonnes—over 30 billion pounds.

Modi’s announcement—and his urging of world leaders to heed India’s example—comes at a time where worldwide concern about plastic pollution is growing rapidly.

India, a country that has been plagued by a trash epidemic for years, is suffering under the unsightly and potentially toxic weight of single-use plastic. According to the Economic Times, the problem is an “all-too familiar sight: an unofficial landfill spread out over an acre and rising several metres high, its base strewn with recently-discarded plastic cups, polybags, wrappers, packaging material and other detritus of our daily lives. This plastic pile, like other similar piles lying by our roadsides or accumulating in empty lots or choking up water bodies.”

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