Subhomita

Author: Subhomita

Hi! I am Subhomita and I would describe myself as someone with a charismatic temperament and a dynamic character. I believe I am a keen learner, talented artist, vocalist, and dancer. I strongly advocate the concept of freedom and justice for all. My belief is that sharing our views when needed can be the only path to creating a difference. Most of all, I aspire to work for the UN someday, uplifting voices of the underrepresented. By joining EconIR WEB as an economics writer, I hope to bring various socio-economic global issues to light, and share my perspective of them.

Introduction

Packaging can be made from any material and is used to contain, protect, handle, deliver, or present goods. A large proportion of Singapore’s domestic waste is packaging waste. In 2018 about one-third of disposed domestic waste consisted of packaging. Approximately 55% of the packaging waste was plastic packaging, whilst 25% was paper packaging. The remaining 20% was made up of other types of packaging materials, such as metal and glass. As packaging is so common yet hardly reused, we need to find ways to reduce and consume it more sustainably.

Sustainable packaging includes recyclable mono-polyolefin packaging, recyclable paper packaging, and degradable/compostable plastic packaging. Sustainable food packaging can help secure the safety of the food consumed and reduce the amount of food wasted. This in turn benefits Singapore’s food security, and, at the same time, provides solutions to solve plastic pollution.

The Singapore Packaging Agreeement

The Singapore Packaging Agreement (SPA) is a joint initiative started in 2007 by the government, industry, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to reduce packaging waste. Since its inception more than 200 organizations in Singapore have worked together to cut down on packaging waste. As of 2019, they have cumulatively reduced about 54,000 tonnes of packaging waste, resulting in estimated packaging material cost savings of $130 million for locally consumed products.

Supporting ground-up movements

One such initiative was Zero Waste SG’s Bring Your Own (BYO) campaign, supported by the Call for Ideas Fund. This initiative aimed to encourage consumers to use reusable bags and containers when they buy takeaway food, beverages, and groceries. Since 2017, more than 400 retail outlets have joined the campaign, providing incentives for customers to bring their own reusables. This has saved approximately two million pieces of plastic disposables and packaging. Leveraging the success of BYO, the NEA supported Zero Waste SG with the Partnership Fund to further develop the campaign in 2019 into Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB) to focus on reducing disposable plastic bag usage.

The packaging waste management roadmap

Packaging is not all bad. It extends the shelf life of food and protects new products from damage during transportation. However, the problem is excessive packaging. Mandatory reporting of packaging data and 3R plans for packaging were introduced in 2020 and legislated under the Resource Sustainability Act. This builds on an existing mandatory waste reporting framework for large malls and hotels, which will also be expanded to all large industrial and commercial premises, including large convention and exhibition centers. The mandatory packaging reporting framework means that producers of packaged products and supermarkets with an annual turnover of more than $10 million will be required to report data on the packaging that they put on the market and their 3R plans for packaging.

The mandatory packaging reporting framework will also lay the foundation for an EPR framework for managing packaging waste, including plastics. This ensures producers are responsible for the collection and recycling of the materials they use to package their products. The aim is to have the EPR system for packaging waste management in place no later than 2025.

Closing the plastics loop

The use of plastics is prevalent in our daily lives – many of our beverage bottles, takeaway food containers, and grocery bags are made of plastics. While plastics can be useful, they are often used in excess and discarded in large amounts.

Plastic has become an issue of significant concern globally as countries re-examine how to sustainably manage their plastic waste. In Singapore, we incinerate all our general waste, minimizing the amount of plastic that ends up as litter both on land and in the oceans. At the same time, because of the drive towards a circular economy to replace the “take-make-dispose” linear economy, and the push to reduce industrial carbon emissions, there has been an increasing interest in the industry to explore more advanced technology to close the plastics loop.

Take, for example, the adoption of chemical recycling to turn plastic into feedstock or fuel. Apart from the current prevalent technology of using mechanical recycling to recycle plastics, chemical recycling technology involves converting separated or mixed plastics back into pyrolysis oil, naphtha, methanol, and syngas. These products can either be converted back into building blocks that can be used to make new plastic products or converted into fuel to replace fossil fuel sources. In particular, there are opportunities for mixed or dirty plastics to be recycled. This is crucial as these mixed and dirty plastics cannot currently be recycled. As a petrochemical hub, Singapore is well-placed to harness this new growth area to close the plastics loop.

Imposing a charge for single-use plastic bags may divert demand to paper or bio-degradable bags, which may not be more resource-efficient from a lifecycle perspective. This is because the production and disposal of all materials have some degree of environmental impact. Therefore, we will have to work on managing excessive consumption of all types of packaging and disposables.

Sources

Introduction

India’s Independence did not only awaken individual dreams, but also opened development opportunities — economically, socially, and politically. On the 15th of August 1947, the Indian peninsula had a new beginning as a country but there were many monumental tasks to be completed by the then-newly formed government. India’s independence was in itself a turning point for India’s economy and its transformation. Seventy-five years later, India seeks to join the $5 trillion club soon. As former prime minister Manmohan Singh put it: “The brightest jewel in the British Crown” was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income at the beginning of the 20th century.

Pre-Independence

Before independence, the much prevalent British dominance drained the country of its natural resources, capital, and labour. India was hopelessly poor as a result of the constant deindustrialization by the British. The vivid social diversity and the exponentially growing unemployment and poverty rates questioned India’s survival as a nation itself. Cambridge historian Angus Maddison’s work shows that India’s share of world income shrank from 22.6% in 1700 (almost equal to Europe’s share in 1700 of 23.3%) to 3.8% in 1952.

After Independence

Then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, introduced an economic model that envisaged a dominant role of the ruling government as an all-pervasive entrepreneur and financier of private businesses. The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 proposed an economic system that would blend elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, free markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise: a mixed economy. Earlier, the Bombay Plan, proposed by eight influential industrialists including J.R.D Tata and G.D. Birla envisaged a substantial public sector with state interventions and regulations in order to protect indigenous industries. The political leadership believed that since planning was not possible in a market economy, the state and public sector would inevitably play a leading role in economic progress.

The Planning Commission was set up in 1950 to oversee various aspects of economic planning, including resource allocation, implementation and appraisal of the five-year plans, and more. The five-year plans focussed on economic and social growth, modeled after those existing in the USSR. India’s first five-year plan was launched in 1951, and it centralized agriculture and irrigation to boost agricultural outputs as India was running out of its foreign reserves on food grain imports. The first five-year was successfully accomplished, with the economy growing at an annual rate of 3.6%, beating its primary target of 2.1%.

Though shortly after, India suspended the five-year plans, drawing up annual plans between 1966 and 1969 instead. This was because India was not in a state to commit to long-term provision of resources. The diversion of capital to finance the war with Pakistan, the below-par growth outcomes of the Third five-year plan, and the then-ongoing war with China, had altogether left the Indian economy with little. The approaching monsoon showers worsened food shortages, causing a steep spike in inflation. The government needed to import food grains and seek foreign loans, and this posed a serious threat to India’s political economy: spiking inflation hand-in-hand with increasing foreign debt.

India’s Economy Now

Though in recent years, the rise of the Indian economy is best depicted in BSE’s Sensex; the 30-share benchmark index. The 30 component companies represent segments of all the sectors of the economy. From a small 1,955.29 points in 1991, the Sensex touched an all-time high of 40,312.07 points on June 4, 2020. Even with the rising taxation on capital gains and investments, India is a country obsessed with cash-driven gold and real estate. These are slowly veering towards investing in a more formal and organized equitable market. Over the past decade, numerous start-ups have budded across the country as young entrepreneurs experiment with investments, technology, and sophistication all side-by-side. The rise of these start-ups has created an ecosystem of new partnerships, venture fundings, along with diversified patterns of consumption in Indian society.