As India strides towards becoming the world’s third-largest economy by the close of this decade, the imperative for sustainable development has moved beyond mere aspiration to a critical necessity for the well-being and security of its burgeoning populace. The circular economy, a paradigm shift in production prioritising the minimisation and elimination of waste throughout a product’s lifecycle, presents a viable pathway. While India has articulated policy frameworks and initiated institutional mechanisms to foster this transition, tangible progress remains a patchwork of isolated efforts, hampered by inefficiencies and a sluggish pace of adoption.
The sheer scale and dynamism of the Indian economy generate a formidable challenge in managing material waste, a complexity exacerbated by the often-inefficient interplay between formal and informal infrastructures and practices. Rapid urbanisation, an escalating tide of waste generation, deferred maintenance of existing systems, and persistent fiscal constraints are collectively straining the nation’s waste management capabilities to their breaking point. The towering landfills encircling the Delhi-National Capital Region serve as stark visual testaments to this crisis, looming over communities as breeding grounds for disease and poignant symbols of an outdated linear production model. A study focusing on Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill, for instance, estimated its annual methane emissions at a staggering 15.3 gigagrams, contributing between one and three percent to India’s total landfill methane emissions. Compounding this, Delhi’s daily waste generation has witnessed an alarming surge, escalating from 400 tonnes in 1999-2000 to 10,470 tonnes by 2019-20, with over half ending up in these overflowing landfills.
Beyond the acute crisis in Delhi, the advancement of waste management across India’s diverse states and municipalities presents a fragmented picture. The Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) report for 2020-21 estimated the nation’s total waste generation at approximately 160,038 tonnes per day. While collection efforts manage to gather 152,749 tonnes, only about half of this, roughly 79,956 tonnes, undergoes any form of treatment. A concerning 29,427 tonnes (18.4 percent) are relegated to landfills, and a substantial 50,655 tonnes (31.7 percent) remain unaccounted for, highlighting significant leakages in the system. The scarcity of widespread material recovery facilities and industrial-scale composting units in most Indian cities renders centralised recycling efforts largely impractical. While some progressive urban centres like Bengaluru and Pune have piloted decentralised waste management programmes, the majority continue to rely on antiquated collection and disposal methodologies.
These realities underscore the urgent need for a comprehensive overhaul and modernisation of India’s waste management systems, with the circular economy paradigm offering a promising framework. Although the core tenets of a CE – minimising waste and maximising resource efficiency – have gained traction within India’s policy discourse, their on-the-ground implementation remains sporadic, fragmented, and largely ineffective. The adoption of circular models transcends mere environmental necessity; it represents a strategic economic opportunity, and articulating this economic rationale more forcefully is crucial to garnering stronger political will. With the government’s determined push to bolster the manufacturing sector under the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the integration of circular economy principles into industrial production holds the potential to significantly enhance resource efficiency, curtail operational costs, and generate a new wave of green employment opportunities.
India has actively engaged in promoting sustainability and the circular economy on the global stage, exemplified by Jaipur’s hosting of the ’12th Regional 3R and Circular Economy Forum in Asia and the Pacific’ in March 2025, a significant step towards regional collaboration on waste management. While such forums play a valuable role, the pressing urgency of waste management necessitates a more assertive administrative impetus and the deployment of robust regulatory instruments, including bans, stringent standards, and fiscal measures. Initiatives like the City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS 2.0), a component of India’s Smart Cities Mission aimed at embedding CE principles into urban development, offer a glimmer of progress. In 2024, CITIIS agreements exceeding INR 1,800 crore were finalised, identifying 18 cities across 14 states as ‘Lighthouse Projects’. Belagavi, for instance, secured a significant grant of INR 135 crore to revamp its solid waste management infrastructure.
However, the overarching challenge lies in scaling these targeted interventions to a national level, ensuring the deep integration of circular economy principles into India’s urban planning and governance frameworks. Such a coordinated nationwide effort may present a tension with the current government’s emphasis on lean governance and its ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’ philosophy. Navigating the delicate balance between effective regulatory oversight and fostering a business-friendly environment is crucial to encourage risk-taking and innovation, thereby enabling the translation of CE principles from policy rhetoric into tangible action.
Policy instruments such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) offer a viable pathway for facilitating this circular transition. The EPR framework places the onus on producers for the post-consumer handling and disposal of their products. By shifting responsibility for the end-of-life management of products from consumers to producers, EPR incentivises a circular mindset right from the initial stages of product conceptualisation and design, rather than solely focusing on end-of-pipe solutions. India’s Plastic Waste Management Rules, initially adopted in 2016 and amended in 2018, provide a legal foundation for EPR in the country, mandating manufacturers and producers to establish systems for sustainable waste collection, segregation, recycling, and disposal. Similar EPR frameworks are in place for electronic waste, batteries, and tyres.
Despite the inherent potential of EPR, its implementation has faced considerable limitations, primarily stemming from financial and logistical hurdles. Establishing efficient recycling and disposal systems demands substantial upfront investment from individual producers and necessitates coordination on shared infrastructure for industry-wide efficiency. Issues such as a lack of regulatory compliance, weak inter-organisational coordination, and under-resourced monitoring and enforcement mechanisms need to be addressed with immediate effect to prevent EPR from becoming another sustainability policy tool with limited real-world impact. Similarly, India’s Right to Repair framework, with its consumer-centric approach and intuitive appeal, holds significant theoretical promise for broader circular economy outcomes, although concrete evidence linking such regulations to tangible results remains minimal. Institutionalising such schemes and rigorously tracking their impact over time will be essential.
Several fundamental challenges continue to impede India’s transition from a linear to a circular economy. The first is the fragmented and inefficient capacity across supply chains for waste collection, material recovery, and reprocessing. The necessary coordination is unlikely to materialise solely through private sector initiatives, as the business case for such comprehensive action is often lacking under conventional economic metrics. To overcome this, the government must provide complementary support to private sector efforts aimed at developing more integrated logistics networks and expanding waste processing capacities, including recycling and composting infrastructure.
Another critical issue is the significant role of the informal sector in waste management. The current lack of effective integration between informal waste collection networks and formal recycling systems results in systemic inefficiencies, lost opportunities for synergy, resource leakage, and significant occupational health risks for those involved. Without formal regulatory acknowledgement and meaningful engagement with the informal waste collection sector, policies risk being detached from on-the-ground realities and their practical implementation.
Addressing these multifaceted challenges is paramount to realising the substantial benefits of a circular economy. The inherent economic value embedded in recovered waste and the direct advantages of waste reduction are well-established. More broadly, enhanced efficiencies in waste management at both industry and macro levels can lead to a significant reduction in the demand for virgin resource extraction and a corresponding decrease in environmental stress. These positive outcomes benefit not only businesses through cost savings and resource security but also urban and national governments striving to improve their performance on critical policy initiatives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, achieving these long-term gains requires stakeholders to adopt a longer-term perspective and employ appropriate discount rates when projecting net benefits. The initial capital investments and potential short-term efficiency trade-offs may appear discouraging, but a longer-term view is essential to fully capture the enduring environmental and social advantages of circularity.
The work of policy formulation, however, remains incomplete without a thorough consideration of how the benefits of a circular economy will be distributed across society. Historically, disadvantaged and marginalised populations are often the first to bear the negative consequences of economic and systemic transitions. The redesign of production systems to embrace circularity may inadvertently lead to job losses and displacement, for instance, as the formalisation of waste collection and a reduction in uncollected waste diminish informal work opportunities. This is not necessarily an inherent flaw in the concept of circularity but rather a reflection of how existing employment markets have evolved to fill gaps in service delivery. Such scenarios necessitate proactive measures, including targeted retraining programmes, support for re-employment initiatives, and robust social assistance frameworks to ensure a just transition.
With India’s circular economy activity projected to reach a substantial US$45 billion by 2030 (as per Kalaari Capital), the fundamental shift from a linear to a circular production model holds immense potential to drive significant economic growth, generate new avenues for job creation, and foster sustainability-focused innovation across various sectors. However, unlocking this transformative potential requires more than just rhetorical commitments and incremental policy adjustments; it demands a fundamental and creative reimagining of how materials and product components are utilised, reused, and iteratively recovered for their inherent value. A successful circularity transition necessitates the development of integrated waste management infrastructures, robust support for and rigorous enforcement of producer responsibility frameworks, and a fundamental reconfiguration of existing supply chains. Persistent legal and policy constraints, including regulatory gaps and a lack of clarity surrounding EPR and product design standards, require deeper reform. Updated, streamlined, and adaptive policies will be instrumental in enabling a more scalable and impactful circular economy. By decisively abandoning outdated and unsustainable production practices, India has the opportunity to emerge as a compelling example for other rapidly developing economies, joining the growing global movement towards a regenerative and resource-efficient future.
Delhi Waste Crisis Signals Indias Slow Grind Towards a Circular Economy
