India: Circular Economy Must Be More Than Just Plastic Waste

Photo by Basil Radeef

India’s circular economy is still dominated by waste management. Although these initiatives aim to improve the collection and recycling of waste, they are end-of-pipe fixes which do not prevent waste from being generated. Indian recycling often relies on outdated and polluting methods, and according to the Global Waste Statistics, e-waste recycling rates remain as low as 1%. Meanwhile, the transboundary dumping of e-waste by developed countries continues to harm India’s sovereignty, with violations of international norms on e-waste movement.

Transitioning towards a circular economy requires an intervention upstream, at the design and early production stages, where decisions determine the entire lifecycle of a product, including how easily it can be repaired and how materials can be recovered. A policy system that incorporates product-lifetime extension, design for repair, materials passports, and industrial symbiosis is therefore essential.

Product-Lifetime Extension

Design decisions reflect how products are made, used, and disposed of. Extending a product's life and service time, from its creation to end-of-life, is one of the most effective upstream strategies. Designing for durability and reuse ensures the product has more lifecycles, generates less waste, lowers carbon emissions and reduces the demand for finite resources. Each additional lifecycle delays the impact of disposal but also postpones the need for product substitution.

Upstream interventions also secure economic value through circular business models, ensuring that resources remain in the economy even after a product’s end-of-life. Selecting recyclable materials, modular components, and standardised parts allows for easier repair and reuse. Extending lifetimes is insufficient, therefore, products must be designed for repair so that durability is supported by practical mechanisms that keep products in use.

Design for Repair

Repairing products is a crucial element of the circular economy and for waste management. Repair corrects the problems and failures of a product for it to meet its full potential. However, India’s repair industry remains underdeveloped. Evidence suggests that mandatory ecodesign for durability, reusability, and repairability would strengthen this sector. Policy levers could ensure that consumers have access to affordable repair services and spare parts throughout the product’s entire lifecycle, even when production ends.

One example is the Right To Repair instrument. Although it may not be well-developed, nevertheless, policy interventions like these can hold manufacturers accountable for reparability and ensure access to manuals and spare parts.

An international example highlights potential pathways. The European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan promotes the design of durable, easy-to-repair products and access to information across the entire value chain. Sweden experimented with VAT incentives, allowing households to deduct 50% of labour costs for domestic appliance repairs and taxing products that are difficult to repair or recycle. While it is not a universal model, this policy trial demonstrates how India could strengthen its repair sector.

Extended Producer Responsibility

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that holds manufacturers responsible for the collection, treatment, and recovery of products. EPR is already showing promising results in EU member states, but with varying implementation results.

India has EPR approaches for plastics and e-waste, however, the implementation of these frameworks remains weak and planned obsolescence is high. Expanding EPR to other sectors, beyond electronics, tyres, packaging and plastics, to reduce waste in a gradual manner, can trigger eco-innovation within India. For example, introducing eco-differentiation fees in EPR schemes, rather than focusing on the cost of waste management as the basis for the fee, could stimulate upstream innovation.

Although the implementation of regulatory instruments across the EU remains uneven, there is considerable promise in these instruments, including recycled content mandates, green procurement, product labelling, and sanctions against polluters. Strengthening accountability mechanisms, such as EPR, would enhance transparency across the entire value chain. Effective circular economy governance requires the implementation of regulatory instruments, such as green procurement, to bring about progress.

Digital Transparency

Circularity depends on information sharing and transparency between actors across the value chain, from designers, disassemblers and recyclers, to effectively manage resources. Digital product passports provide detailed information about a product’s status and use, from its origin to durability and end-of-life pathways. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) contribute to this by evaluating the environmental impacts of electronic products throughout the product’s lifecycle.

Technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) can track materials across lifecycles, predict reuse opportunities, strengthen reverse logistics opportunities and ensure closed-loop design. However, there are challenges in IoT. It requires widespread and low-cost digital connectivity and infrastructure, as well as skilled human capital. These are challenges that India is facing. Investing in its digital capacity is crucial to realise the potential these tools have to offer for its circular economy.

While transparency enhances individual product cycles, progress depends on collaboration across industries. Industrial symbiosis addresses this issue.

Industrial Symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis involves a multi-stakeholder collaboration effort for waste, by-products, or surplus energy from one process to be recovered and reused in another. This approach creates closed-loop systems with end-of-pipe solutions where products can be easily disassembled, remanufactured, and reused. This ensures that resource use and carbon emissions are effectively reduced.

Circular Economy parks are designed to promote industrial symbiosis, investment in new technologies and collaboration between businesses, economic opportunities and the minimisation of environmental impacts. India is developing its first circular economy parks, including a park for urban waste in Maharashtra, one for e-waste in Delhi, and a ceramic waste park in Uttar Pradesh.

These initiatives hold potential, but without policy reform, India’s economic and regulatory structure risk continuing to prioritise linear models.

India’s Policy Landscape

India has made progress, but its economic and regulatory system still favour the linear model. For example, Delhi’s think tank, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), published a study suggesting that the goods and services tax (GST) structure for plastic products imposes double taxation on recycled materials, making virgin materials artificially cheaper. Legal regulations stand at the initial stage, and implementation is slowed by a lack of general awareness. Moreover, informal sectors continue to dominate e-waste collection and processing, relying on unregulated recycling and hazardous methods such as incineration, burning and acid stripping.

Other examples reveal potential alternatives. China’s Circular Economy Promotion Law (2008), Uruguay’s Circular Economy Rules (2017), and Mexico’s General Law of Circular Economy (2021) provide binding frameworks. India, on the other hand, has relied on sector-specific action plans. Moving from strategy documents to a binding legislative framework based on institutions, incentives, information, and financing would strengthen enforcement and accountability, reducing loopholes and favouring circular business models.

Systemic Change Alternatives

- Fiscal Reforms and Digital Apps

Tax incentives and subsidies could support companies that adopt circular practices. Deposit-return schemes (DRS), including app-based DRS could also encourage people to dispose of different types of plastic waste at specific collection points.

- Upstream Interventions

Policymakers, political leaders, the finance sector and businesses have a role to play in enabling upstream interventions. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, upstream interventions are influenced by regulatory incentives, product design choices and risk assessments.

- National Circular Economy Authority (NCEA)

Creating a National Circular Economy Authority (NCEA) would provide a coordinating mechanism across the government, academia, civil society and businesses, ensuring a national roadmap for India’s circular economy and for circular principles to become commonly referred to across policy portfolios.

- Integrate Circular Economy Into Education

Updating the existing national curriculum to include national circular economy principles backed by scientific evidence for students starting from an early age, all the way to adulthood, would increase long-term awareness and collective action.

- Consumer Behaviour

Customer involvement is crucial to achieve regenerative cycles since deliberate consumer effort is required to repair and extend the life cycle of a product. Research shows that consumers’ choices and perceptions determine their decisions to repair and reuse. Funding studies on consumer behaviour to explore how repair practices can be encouraged and product lifecycles can be extended is crucial.

- Research and Development Investment

Public-private partnerships and grants could support innovation by investing in research and development in new circular technologies, sustainable materials, modular product design and advanced recycling methods.

Effective implementation of new rules is essential, including training informal sector workers in e-waste management, increasing consumer awareness so waste is deposited correctly, and introducing financial incentives through schemes like Product Refund, Recycling Fees, or Disposal Fees.

Moving Upstream

India is gradually transforming itself into a resource-efficient and environmentally conscious economy. Genuine transformation requires upstream interventions such as designing products for longevity and repair, holding stakeholders accountable for transparency and information sharing, and ensuring that collaboration is prioritised. By reforming fiscal policies, strengthening institutions, and investing in innovation, India can achieve genuine resource efficiency, job creation, enhance its economic competitiveness. With a clear roadmap and coordinated governance, it can position itself at the forefront of the global circular economy transition.