Punjab Pollution Control Board Summons Leading Brands based on First-ever State-wise Plastic Waste Brand Audit in India

  PATIALA(The Uttam Hindu: In a decisive step towards strengthening on-ground compliance, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) today summoned 14 leading brands identified as major contributors of hard-to-recycle plastic waste. The Board has directed them to present clear, time-bound strategies that incentivise consumers to return post-use plastic packaging.

PPCB Chairperson Reena Gupta stated, “No company will be allowed to pollute Punjab. We will fix accountability and clean up all our cities.” This move germinated from a plastic waste brand audit conducted by the Board, which is a first-ever exercise in India.

The Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) carried out the Plastic Waste Brand Audit 2025 in six cities of Punjab — Amritsar, Bathinda, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Mohali, and Patiala. The study checked plastic waste collected from different areas in these cities to find out which companies produce the most plastic waste. Out of 6,991 kg of total municipal waste across diverse socio-economic profiles studied, 613 kg was found to be plastic. The results show that 88% of this plastic waste is hard-to-recycle.

Brand-wise Findings

● A total of 11,810 plastic packets were found across the six cities.

● Just 14 major national and multinational brands were responsible for about 59% of the hard-to-recycle waste.

The PPCB has said that these findings highlight the urgent need for strict action under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules, which require companies to take responsibility for the waste created by their products. The Board noted that some companies/Brand Owners are meeting EPR targets only on paper by using unverifiable certificates or shifting responsibility to other states. This practice increases Punjab’s pollution problem instead of solving it. Producers of plastic waste must shift to real, verifiable, and fully auditable collection and processing of the plastic waste they generate, and this work must happen within Punjab itself, not on paper or in other states

PPCB will continue to enhance monitoring, enforcement, and industry collaboration to move Punjab toward a cleaner, circular and plastic-responsible future.