Circular Economy- A Step Towards Resource Efficiency 

Deepti Kapil, B Vinod Babu, Sameer Arora, Rishabh Bhatghare, Prashant Gargava

Abstract


The promotion of circular economy within industrial and commercial operations ensures the sustainable consumption of material and resource efficiency, while minimizing the burden of waste disposal. India has taken several initiatives to achieve circularity and minimization of the waste. The Hon’ble Prime Minister of India accentuated for the benefits of circular economy and converting the waste to wealth in different episodes of ‘Mann Ki Baat’ for almost every year since 18th episode held on March 27, 2016 to achieve maximum resource utilization. This study quantifies the circularity being achieved in different waste streams through policy interventions. The Waste Management Rules were amended time to time and various Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Guidelines were issued in line with the circular economy opportunities. An EPR (extended producer responsibility) framework has been developed and implemented for different wastes stream like plastic waste, waste batteries, E-waste and tyre waste for effective channelization of wastes with targets for recycling. Online portal for the implementation of the same is also developed to bring transparency to the system of waste management. As a result of this, since 2015 recycling/utilization of industrial waste has increase 2.9 times (2.6 to 7.6 Million MT).  E-waste recycling has also increased by 5.11 times from 69,414 to 3,54,540 MT since the year 2017. It was found that the above policy interventions and guidelines or SOPs have resulted in substantial reduction in disposal of waste and also effective use of secondary resources. This initiative has resulted in increased collection and recycling of waste as well as created market eco-system and related employment in waste management.

Keywords


Circular Economy, resource efficiency, recycling, utilization, industrial waste, E-waste, plastic waste, waste batteries, construction and demolition waste, EPR

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