Every day, India throws away enough plastic to fill 65 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Around 60% of this comes from the packaging industry—chip packets, bottles, polythene covers, and multi-layered wrappers. Managing this mountain of waste is a challenge, and the government hopes to address it with the Draft Plastic Waste Management (Second Amendment) Rules, 2025. You can read the amendment notification here.

The changes mostly address Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Simply put, it makes companies—manufacturers, brand owners, and importers—accountable for collecting and recycling the plastic they generate. The new rules also set targets for including recycled plastic in packaging: from 30% in rigid plastics this year to as high as 60% by 2028–29.

On paper, these rules look like a push towards a circular economy, encouraging reuse, recycling, and sustainable use of plastics. However, India’s recycling infrastructure is weak, traceability is poor, and there are no strict penalties. This makes enforcement shaky, while loopholes make it easy for companies to tick the compliance box without really changing the ground reality.

Read more: Extended Producer Responsibility: Gaps in the draft rules for packaging waste and sanitary products

So, will these amendments drive real accountability, or will they end up as another well-intentioned policy that fails in practice?

Here is a video explainer that breaks down the rules, their targets, the gaps, and what needs to change to make them work:

Also read:

• Bans, clean-ups, recycling push: Why all of this has failed to beat plastic pollution
• ‘Ellam Plastic Mayam’: Chennai’s solid waste problem and how to fix it