Circular economy: the principles and India's instruments

Prelims and MainsCurrent affairs on this: Circular economy and resource efficiency

A linear economy takes, makes and throws away; a circular one keeps material in use, by designing waste out, keeping products and parts in service, and returning what is left as feedstock rather than litter. The ladder in the figure runs from refuse and reduce, which avoid the material, through reuse, repair and refurbish, which keep the product, to recycle and recover, which keep only the material or its energy; the higher the rung, the less is lost. India's instruments sit on different rungs: the right to repair portal and the scrappage policy keep products in service or end them properly, extended producer responsibility makes the producer pay for the return of plastic, tyres, batteries, electronics, used oil and vehicles, and slag, fly ash and construction waste go into roads and cement. Sustainable Development Goal 12 is the international frame.

• NITI Aayog's 2021 plan named eleven material streams for circular action, each with a ministry: municipal solid and liquid waste, scrap metal, electronics, lithium ion batteries, solar panels, gypsum, toxic and hazardous industrial waste, used oil, agricultural waste, tyres and rubber, and end of life vehicles; the extended producer responsibility rules that followed, for batteries and electronics in 2022, tyres in 2022, used oil in 2023 and end of life vehicles from April 2025, are set out on the responsibility foundation.
• The vehicle scrappage policy of 2021: a fitness test for commercial vehicles after fifteen years and private vehicles after twenty, government vehicles scrapped after fifteen, registered scrapping facilities that recover steel, aluminium and copper, and a certificate of deposit that earns a discount on a new vehicle. The right to repair portal of 2022 lists makers of phones, farm equipment, consumer durables and vehicles who provide manuals and spares.
• The residues that become inputs: fly ash from thermal plants into cement, bricks and road embankments, with use notified under the Environment (Protection) Act; steel slag processed into road aggregate; red mud from alumina; construction and demolition waste under its own 2016 rules into recycled aggregate. The two subjects on this theme carry the current figures.
• The labels and the procurement: the Ecomark Rules, 2024 replace the 1991 scheme with a certification run by the Central Pollution Control Board; greenwashing guidelines from the Central Consumer Protection Authority in 2024 bar unbacked claims; green public procurement is the demand side lever, since government buys about a fifth of the economy's output.
• The international frame: Sustainable Development Goal 12 on responsible consumption and production, with target 12.5 on cutting waste; the Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy Industry Coalition launched under India's G20 presidency in 2023; the World Circular Economy Forum, which India hosted in 2026; and Mission LiFE of 2022, which puts the same idea on the consumer.

Mains: India's circularity is high by poverty and low by design: the informal sector recovers most metal and paper for wages, and the policy task is to formalise that recovery without pricing the ragpicker out, which is what extended producer responsibility does badly when certificates are bought from large recyclers alone.

See also: Industrial residues in roads · Fly ash by rail · World Circular Economy Forum · Extended producer responsibility across the waste rules · Plastic: the rules, the ban, microplastics and the treaty · Cutting what is hard to cut: hard to abate sectors, methane and carbon removal