Consumer behaviour in all developed and emerging economies has recorded a fundamental shift over the last decade. They are now ready to pay a few extra bucks if the product is environment-friendly.

According to studies, over 65 percent of millennial shoppers prefer eco-friendly, plastic-neutral, sustainable, or organic products. Mindful of this shift, brands around the globe are now projecting themselves as climate champions.

New-age brands and startups are especially conscious of this and are quick to align themselves with terminologies like 'sustainable' and 'eco-friendly'. Among the most popular ways for a brand to project itself as environmentally responsible is -- reducing the use of plastic or cutting it altogether. In several nations, including India, brands are going plastic neutral.

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How are companies going plastic neutral?

Plastic, as we know, is non-biodegradable. Therefore, all plastic ever produced is still present in the environment in some form. In view of this, more and more companies are becoming or at least working in the direction of becoming plastic neutral. This not only bodes well for the environment but also enhances their brand value as customers appreciate such model practices.

A company is called plastic neutral when it recycles the same amount of waste it generates. The underlying idea is to not add up to plastic waste. In India, brands like mCaffeine, TagZ Foods, Tea Trunk, and Conscious Chemist, among others, claim to have gone plastic neutral.

Government rules for plastic offsetting

In India, the 'extended producer responsibility' -- released in 2020 -- mandates plastic producers, importers, and brand-owners for the treatment, recycling, reuse or disposal of plastic products after a consumer has used and disposed them of.

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Plastic offsetting can be done in three different ways -- pay a fee into a central corpus that would be spent towards managing the waste; buy credits from a system that would be established to offset the plastic waste they generate; or participate in and pay for establishing producer responsibility organisations to collect and manage post-consumer plastic waste.

(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)