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Adopting environment-friendly disposal of plastic to control the amount of plastic waste in the environment is known as plastic waste management. It is a global issue that has been faced by almost every country. There have been many initiatives taken by many countries individually. Still, a huge change was never recorded as this is a global and complex issue requiring countries to collaborate to impact this matter significantly. One of the biggest plastic applications is the packing of finished products around the world. There should be as less as possible use of single-use plastic in every field.
Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules
- Earlier in 2016, the amendments regarding plastic waste management mandated the generators of plastic waste that would help minimise plastic use. It was also concerned with the localities, vendors, and gram panchayats to pay more attention to the spreading of plastic waste
- But now, under new plastic waste management rules 2022, many more steps have been taken as it has become more of an issue. With these new rules, the Ministry of the Environment categorised plastic into four different categories. Category 1 includes rigid plastic, category 2 includes flexible single-layer plastic, category 3 includes multilayer plastic, and category 4 includes plastic sheets
- The ministry of environment has also added more restrictions regarding packing products using plastic. It has been mandated to reuse the rigid plastic in the packing to avoid producing more fresh plastic
- The prime focus of Plastic Waste Management is recycling plastic, decreasing the demand for fresh plastic and indirectly helping save the environment
Harmful effects of plastic waste
Plastic has been in use by humans for many, many years, and now it has reached a point where there is access to waste plastic as it takes a very long time to decompose and get back into its natural form. If we do not start working on plastic waste management, this issue will increase its harmful effects. This is the reason why we need systems like the ministry of Environment. Platic’s non-biodegradability and weak waste management system can cause environmental menaces. These physicochemical properties of plastics contribute to their usefulness, and their wastes after utilisation are thrown away their durability advantage, which supports their benefit and wastes after utilisation. Immediate measures and implementations are needed to manage them properly, which can guard the environment. This is also applied in an aqueous environment for aquatic and aquaculture protection since many pollutants are hydrophobic. Plastic in the aquatic environment is potentially acting as a sink for pollutants, making them less available to wildlife, particularly if buried on the seafloor, which changes vide notification.
Management strategies for plastic waste
Plastic wastes are rapidly produced and exposed at a high rate due to the world’s industrial development and population growth. Government municipalities, social communities, and local authorities have established different measures and environmental safety legislation rules to guide the population in disposing of plastic waste after utilisation. The following are some of the strategies:
- Recycling is the waste management method that gathers waste materials and recycles them into raw materials that can be reused to form other beneficial products. It is also known as “renewing or reusing” to prevent the harmful effect on society and environmental conservation. This process is executed in the following six steps: collecting waste plastics, sorting, or arranging plastics into categories, washing to remove impurities, shredding and resizing, identifying and separating plastics, and compounding.
- Landfills: Plastic removal post-utilization in different dustbins ends up in landfills. Landfills refer to all places and areas where we refuse all disposable plastic waste after utilisation before being buried under the earth’s face. The objectives of landfill arrangement are to provide a safer area of plastic waste disposal to protect all measurements of the environment, i.e., aquatics and airspace, to achieve the goals. This process is completed very slowly, as it can take more than a year.
Bioremediation: It refers to the process where microorganisms decompose wastes. Bioremediation can also be defined as the branch of biotechnology that has main principles towards detoxification and decontamination by using microorganisms to biodegrade all-natural compounds that can be treated under biodegradation of plants, and algae, fungi, and bacteria. In the bioremediation process, enzymes as chemical catalysts work by lowering the activation energy and converting substrate into the product.
Conclusion
Although plastics have several important roles in our lives due to their physicochemical composition, they can cause different problems to human life and the ecosystem if the post-use disposal is not well-managed. The amendments made to the plastic waste management rules are better than before, but the system still needs more improvements and more strict rules for the betterment of the earth’s environment. The recycling of plastic waste will help to improve the economy by decreasing the production cost. Not only economically viable but also will help to eradicate infectious diseases that are transmitted through polluted air and water.
