Circular Economy
India Development Review
In just five questions, explore the circular economy—what it is, why it’s crucial for sustainability, and the challenges of adopting it.
In just five questions, explore the circular economy—what it is, why it’s crucial for sustainability, and the challenges of adopting it.
Microplastics are an invisible pollutant, affecting everything from ocean life to human health. They’re the size of a sand grain. At smaller than 5 millimetres (mm), microplastics enter us through the air we breathe, through food we eat and even through skin. Here’s why India should be taking this issue seriously.
In India, waste is more than a problem—it’s a billion-dollar opportunity. But behind the scenes, startups face a different challenge.
India currently generates around 62 million tonnes of waste overall, out of which only 20% is recycled—the rest ends up in landfills and oceans, affecting human and marine life, as well as destroying the environment, according to the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change. Only 30% of the recyclable waste is currently recycled, according to the Mordor Intelligence report, and a majority of it is done by unorganised factions that almost operate as monopolies with little tolerance for intrusion from others.
As of May 2024, around 145 governments have announced – or are considering – net zero and carbon neutrality targets, covering close to 90% of global emissions. Among these are China’s 2060 carbon neutrality target, the EU’s 2050 net zero target, the US’s 2050 net zero target, and India’s 2070 net zero target.
During the early wave of net zero commitments, most were simply political declarations of intent, with details on what the net zero targets meant in practice largely missing. For instance, governments did not specify to what extent they planned to reduce emissions by the target year compared to “neutralising” them through carbon dioxide removals.
This blog outlines our recent findings on how governments have improved their current planning on carbon dioxide removal — sometimes known as ‘negative emissions’ — to meet their net zero targets, and why this matters.
Held from 25 November to 1 December 2024, in Busan, Republic of Korea, the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5) to develop a Global Plastic Treaty concluded without an agreement, pushing further negotiations into 2025. The draft text made some references to local and subnational governments, prompting the Local and Subnational Governments Coalition to End Plastic Pollution to advocate for stronger inclusion and appealing to all local and subnational governments to join the Coalition.
The transition to a circular economy could lead to the creation of millions of green and valuable jobs worldwide. However, a new report reveals a lack of research happening in developing countries, in the Global South, where the vast majority of these employment prospects in waste management and recycling are actually going to be located.
The use, re-use and recycling of products helps combat climate change, which is especially important to the many vulnerable nations and island states in the Global South. To be truly sustainable, though, this development shift must be founded on informed policies that promote both social and environmental benefits, fairly and affordably.
Global waste increasing year by year, and the question of effective and environmentally friendly recycling is more dire than ever. The future of waste management is more innovation, technology and solving new ways, and systems that can deal with tons of waste produced globally. In this blog, we will look at the next and upcoming categories of technologies and trends.
The inappropriate and limited management of organic waste causes it to be disposed of in streets or landfills, negatively impacting the various ecosystems due to leachate, the appearance of vectors, and the emission of greenhouse gases. Taking advantage of this waste under the concept of circular economy is a viable alternative, one way to do it is by transforming it into compost for agricultural activity. This research seeks to propose a new use of organic waste with favorable characteristics to obtain biomaterials.
Plastic pollution is a growing global menace. Between 2010 and 2020, the global production of plastics increased from 270 million tonnes to 367 million tonnes. Every year, more than 12 million tonnes of plastics end up in the world’s oceans, with severe consequences for marine life. When macro plastics degrade into micro-plastics, they easily contaminate the food chain and pose significant threats to human health via inhalation and ingestion.
By 2030, plastic waste is expected to double to 165 million tonnes in African countries. Most of this will be in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.
Burning plastic in dumps and open fires is as big a problem for the planet as littering, scientists said on Wednesday (Sep 4) in a detailed new assessment of how plastic enters the environment.
A world-first global register of plastic pollution, published in the journal Nature, identifies India as the biggest source of such trash and burning garbage as a much bigger problem than previously thought.
