Vikram Bhanushali, President of the Indian Compostable Polymer Association (ICPA)

Read in the following a guest article by Vikram Bhanushali, President of our partner association, the Indian Compostable Polymer Association (ICPA). 

India’s single use plastics (SUP) packaging growth is on an exponential trajectory. Reports estimate the packaging consumption in India has doubled in the past decade, rising from 4.3 kg per person per annum (pppa) to 8.6 kg pppa. It’s driven by the population’s consumer behaviour arising from the door-delivered consumer goods, groceries, take away foods, etc. In the past, this development mainly concentrated on India’s major cities and metros. However, the majority of the Indian population resides in villages and tier-1/tier-2 cities with over 50,000 respectively over 100,000 inhabitants. Now, services like door-deliveries are also accessed by the growing young working population with increasing income levels. They are located in the smaller urban areas. Here you find a fast adoption to the “Ease of Convenience” type of consumer behaviour. Though the urban and semi-urban areas contribute majorly to the use of SUPs, the share of the villages in waste generation is also growing rapidly. Despite the fact that the villages used to lead a very sustainable way of life virtually refusing th