India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the 14th Conference of Parties (CoP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
During the opening remarks, Modi declared the “time has come” for “the world to say goodbye” to single-use plastic, urging world leaders to follow India’s lead in banning the plastic.
As India is gearing up to take over the presidency of the CoP, the prime minister said that the country “looks forward to making an effective contribution.”
During an Independence Day speech given on August 15th, 2019, Modi urged citizens as well as government agencies to “take the first big step” in freeing India of single-use plastics. India’s prime minister, who leads efforts to eliminate single-use plastics by 2022, announced a ban on six items on October 2nd, 2019, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. These six items include plastic bags, straws, cups, plates, small bottles, and some sachets.
The sweeping ban is expected to cut India’s annual consumption of plastic by five percent. India’s current consumption is estimated to be about 14 million tonnes—more than 30 billion pounds.
Modi’s announcement comes at a time where worldwide concern about plastic pollution is growing rapidly.
According to a new study published in Science of The Total Environment, plastic is currently omnipresent. Earlier in 2019, Gregory Wetherbee, a US Geological Survey researcher, found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers in rainwater. These discoveries come after the near-constant stream of disturbing headlines detailing marine animals and birds found dead tangled in plastic waste or with stomachs full of a host of plastic debris.
Some Indian states already have laws dealing with single-use plastic on the books but, according to Hindu Times, they are not enforced due, in part, to the costs for collecting and recycling plastic waste.
The country argued for a resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly in March to phase-out single-use plastic worldwide by 2025. Environmental groups accused the United States of blocking this and other ambitious global goals at the conference in Kenya, leading to a final statement including the far less concrete phrasing of “significantly reducing single-use plastic by 2030.”
COMMENTS