Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016 notified

Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 notified

Minimum Thickness of Plastic Carry Bags Increased from 40 to 50 Microns
The Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 has been notified and comes into force. It supercedes the Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011. The new rules has increased the minimum thickness of plastic carry bags from 40 microns to 50 microns. The new rules are now also applicable in villages. The previous rules was limited till municipal areas.

The Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Prakash Javadekar said that 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated every day, out of which 9,000 tonnes is collected and processed, but 6,000 tonnes of plastic waste is not being collected.


Shri Javadekar also said that the rules, which were admissible upto municipal areas, have now been extended to all villages. The Minister said that notifying the new Plastic Waste Management Rules is a part of the revamping of all Waste Management Rules
The following are the salient features of the new Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016:
· Increases minimum thickness of plastic carry bags from 40 to 50 microns and stipulate minimum thickness of 50 micron for plastic sheets also to facilitate collection and recycle of plastic waste, likely to increase the cost by about 20 %. Hence, the tendency to provide free carry bags will come down and collection by the waste-pickers also increase to some extent.
· Expanded jurisdiction of applicability from the municipal areas to rural areas;
· bring in the responsibilities of producers and generators, both in plastic waste management system and to introduce collect back system of plastic waste by the producers/brand owners, as per extended producers responsibility;
· Introduce collection of plastic waste management fee through pre-registration of the producers, importers of plastic carry bags/multilayered packaging and vendors selling the same for establishing the waste management system;
· Promote use of plastic waste for road construction as per Indian Road Congress guidelines or energy recovery, or waste to oil etc. for gainful utilization of waste and also address the waste disposal issue; to entrust more responsibility on waste generators, namely payment of user charge as prescribed by local authority, collection and handing over of waste by the institutional generator, event organizers.