8. India

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PCR Plastic Packaging Regulations
Global

8.1 Regulatory Overview

Food contact plastics in India falls under the responsibility of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which is a statutory body under the Ministry of Health. FSSAI is in charge to formulate rules and regulations as well as other food related governance. The activity of standardization, marking and quality certification is with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), which is a department of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution.

BSI delivers standards in many areas, including food contact plastics; the standards are in general not binding, unless adopted in FSSAI measures as binding legislation. This has happened in many cases for food contact plastics.

Recycling of Plastics, is addressed under BIS – Plastic Committee Division [1] 12:7. The corresponding Standards are:

IS 14534 “Guidelines for the recovery and recycling of plastics waste” [2]
IS 14535 “Recycled plastics for the manufacturing of products – Designation” [3]

According to these standards, recycled plastics cannot be used for producing food contact articles. This situation, however, may change soon, as new directions have been identified in the BIS Plastic Committee meeting of 18^th January 2022, in accordance with the political push for increasing the circularity of plastics. Details on such new directions are not available yet, but is expected that more liberalization will be introduced in PET bottle-to-bottle recycling schemes.

India has a well-developed industry on plastic recycling, over 21 million of bottles are recycled every year; overall, 70% of PET is recycled in textile applications, 10% in straps and non-food films.

The recycling capacity is about 800 k.tons/year, distributed among ab. 40 players.