Syllabus
GS Paper 3 – Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.
Context
In discussions led by the UN in Nairobi, plastic credits are being considered as a potential tool to reduce plastic pollution.
Plastic Credits:
- Definition: Plastic credits are a market-based mechanism enabling companies or individuals to fund plastic waste collection and recycling, receiving credits in return to offset their own plastic production or usage.
- Comparison: Similar to carbon credits used by fossil fuel companies to counterbalance greenhouse gas emissions.
- Facilitation: The exchange is facilitated by entities such as accreditors like Verra, marketplaces like the Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX), or private companies involved in credit trading or organizing credit-generating activities.
- Outcome: When companies purchase sufficient plastic credits to neutralize their plastic footprint within a designated timeframe, they can assert a net-zero plastic status.
Plastic offsetting: Based on the idea that companies and consumers can compensate for their plastic consumption by purchasing plastic credits.
Plastic neutrality: It is claimed when a company has purchased enough plastic credits to offset its entire plastic footprint for a set period of time.
Advantages of Plastic Credits:
- Plastic Pollution Mitigation: It can reduce the amount of plastic that enters our oceans, rivers, and landfills.
- Financial Incentivization: It finances waste management infrastructure which helps in plastic waste collection and recycling and fosters sustainable solutions.
- Circular Economy Promotion: The plastic materials are reused and recycled instead of being discarded or leaked into the environment.
- Environmental Impact Reduction: They reduce the environmental impacts of plastic pollution, such as greenhouse gas emission, water consumption, land use, and biodiversity loss.
- Income Support for Informal Sector: Money raised from waste collection and recycling credits can generate income for the informal waste sector people who pick through waste.
- Awareness Generation: It will help in engagement among consumers, businesses and government on the issue of plastic pollution and the need for more sustainable solutions.
- Accurate Accreditation: These credits are measurable, traceable, and verifiable, ensuring that they represent actual reductions in plastic waste.
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): By purchasing plastic credits, companies can demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practices and social responsibility.
Disadvantages of Plastic Credits:
- Ineffectiveness: Not a replacement for reducing plastic use at the source, the most impactful approach to prevent pollution.
- Lack of Standardization: Lack of standardization and regulation can lead to confusion and misinformation for consumers and corporations.
- Limited Social and Economic Consideration: Might not consider the rights and livelihoods of informal waste collectors, limiting the scope of impact.
- Quality Concerns: Fails to consider the quality and durability of recycled plastic, impacting its environmental performance and value.
- Unsustainable Model: Encourages a linear plastic production model, hindering the shift to a circular economy and promoting wasteful practices.
- Root Cause Oversight: Fails to tackle the root cause of plastic pollution—overproduction and consumption of single-use plastics.
- False Sense of Sustainability: Can create a misleading sense of sustainability, diverting attention from the essential need to reduce and redesign plastic products.
- Data Accuracy Concerns: Reliance on self-reported or inaccurate data may result in fraud and double counting concerns.
- Greenwashing Criticism: Criticized by some environmental groups as a greenwashing tool, potentially encouraging burning plastics and causing increased emissions and health issues.
Way Forward:
- Alignment with Existing Standards: Plastic credits ought to align with established frameworks like the Global Reporting Initiative, utilizing a shared methodology for measuring and reporting impact.
- Independent Validation: Independent auditors and certifiers should validate claims and processes, preventing conflicts of interest.
- Support for Livelihoods and Value Creation: Plastic credits should prioritize supporting the livelihoods and well-being of waste collectors and recyclers, creating value for low-value plastic.
- Example: Plastic Bank serves as an illustration of a socially inclusive scheme.
Must Read: Plastic Waste Management | Micro-plastics
Source: The Hindu
Practice Question
Discuss the potential role of Plastic Credits in addressing plastic pollution, considering their advantages and disadvantages. Analyze the measures required to ensure the effectiveness of waste management. (Answer in 250 words)