Importance of Data in Plastic Waste Management in India

Abstract

Sustainable development goals have a global indicator framework that guides countries in selecting relevant indicators for the national indicator framework. It can be used by countries to track progress around specific targets. To track such progress around the plastic economy, a data-driven approach is required. Plastic waste management has long been a challenge and is considered an issue mainly due to the lack of infrastructure, technology, and efficient systems for collecting and processing plastic. However, not much importance is given to ‘how much’ that is the ‘data’ for plastics to deal with. The polymer supply chain is extremely complex due to its multiple forms, numerous applications across sectors and products, and vast time range within which they can reach their end of life. There are only rough estimates about plastic waste generation in India without any proper methodology. Even when a certain methodology is provided it is not holistic as it does not consider the informal sector of India, leading to the debilitation of data generated. Data transparency is a must to build a circular waste value chain. It could be achieved via the unified digital platform and strengthening of extended producer responsibility. Instead of just provision of the numbers, transparency could be brought by stating the methods for data collection and its completeness which can translate to how veritable the quoted numbers are and where to fill the gaps in assumptions and calculations.