In a proactive move, the government of India has advised the e-commerce firms to reduce and ultimately stop the use of single-use plastic. Most of the products delivered by e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart come packed in plastic sheets of various kinds.
Not just stopping at asking the companies to eliminate single-use plastic, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has gone a step further and asked these companies to help with developing alternate packaging materials that can contribute to reducing India’s plastic consumption. The use of plastic in the packaging of goods adds up to 40% of all non-fibre plastic used in the country.
Both Amazon and Flipkart have independently confirmed that they are already seized of the matter and that have set their own internal deadlines to completely eliminate single-use plastic from their operations. These two together may be currently accounting for over 90% of all e-commerce business in the country.
Amazon claims that only 7% of their packaging material consists of single-use plastic and that they are committed to using only eco-friendly packaging material and to reduce waste. They have set June 2020 as their target date by which all their buildings will be rid of using banned plastics.
Flipkart, on the other hand, says they will be able to completely eliminate the use of single-use plastic only by March 2021. They have achieved just 25% so far. By that date they would have switched to use of only recycled plastic material for packaging and other purposes. However, they have taken other steps like better waste management, using electric vehicles in their warehouses and so on.
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is working on various other initiatives under the Swachhata Hi Seva Campaign -2019.
In this, the DPIIT is trying to rope in all stakeholders to reduce the use of plastic. Cement manufacturing units have been asked to look at alternate means of packing. All state governments have been advised to focus on collection and disposal of plastic waste. Industrial clusters have been directly approached to create more awareness on the issue.