62,175 Producers, Importers and Brand Owners Had Registered on India's Plastic EPR Portal by 25 June 2026, and Processors Had Generated Credit for 237.95 Lakh Tonnes of Packaging Waste Under Rules That Sit Beside the Single-Use Ban of 1 July 2022

On 25 June 2026, 62,175 producers, importers and brand owners were registered on the Central Pollution Control Board’s portal for plastic packaging, the board told the National Green Tribunal in a filing dated 6 July 2026. The same filing records 3,079 registered plastic waste processors with a combined capacity of 378.4 lakh tonnes a year (37.84 million), and says those processors had generated credit for 237.95 lakh tonnes of waste since the system began. Of that, 178.48 lakh tonnes had been transferred to the companies that owe the obligation. The portal is the working part of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), the rule that makes the company putting packaged goods on the market answerable for collecting and processing the packaging afterwards. It runs beside a nationwide ban on identified single-use plastic items that took effect on 1 July 2022.

The ban: which items, from which dates

The environment ministry notified the Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules, 2021 on 12 August 2021, as G.S.R. 571(E), and announced them the next day. From 1 July 2022 the manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of these items is prohibited: ear buds with plastic sticks, plastic sticks for balloons, plastic flags, candy sticks, ice-cream sticks and polystyrene (Thermocol) for decoration. The list also covers plates, cups, glasses, forks, spoons, knives, straws, trays, stirrers, wrapping films around sweet boxes, invitation cards, cigarette packets, and plastic or PVC banners under 100 microns.

In the ministry’s words these are items of low utility and high littering potential. Carry bags got a thickness floor instead of a ban, and the minimum rose from 50 microns to 75 microns on 30 September 2021 and to 120 microns on 31 December 2022. A micron is a thousandth of a millimetre, so 120 microns is 0.12 millimetre. According to the release, the change is meant to stop littering by light bags, and a thicker bag can also be used again.

An explainer issued on 1 July 2022 records that 32 states and union territories had set up a Special Task Force under the chief secretary or administrator, and that 2,591 of 4,704 urban local bodies had reported notifying the ban. It adds that the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) had issued directions to e-commerce companies, leading sellers and users of the items, and plastic raw material makers on phasing them out. On use, it puts India at 11 kg of plastic per person against a global average of 28 kg, citing a Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs report. Open burning of plastic waste is among the harms it lists, and the CPCB’s readings on that front are in our piece on Delhi’s air.

States added their own lists. Lakshadweep, which has no plastic producer or recycler and gets its goods from Kerala and Karnataka, banned 13 items from 25 January 2019 and 10 more from 15 April 2021, according to its administration’s reply as compiled by the CPCB. The reefs around those islands are the subject of our piece on coral bleaching in Lakshadweep and the Andamans.

Who has to register, and for what

The 2016 rules already placed EPR on producers, importers and brand owners, together called PIBOs. The 2021 amendment gave the EPR guidelines legal force, and notification G.S.R. 133(E) of 16 February 2022 inserted them as Schedule II of the rules. A release of 18 February 2022 says the guidelines apply the polluter pays principle and allow companies to run deposit-refund or buy-back schemes so that used packaging does not mix with household waste.

Schedule II covers four kinds of packaging. Rigid plastic is Category I, and flexible plastic, single or multilayer, including sheets, carry bags, sachets and pouches, is Category II. Multilayered packaging with at least one non-plastic layer makes up Category III. Sheet and carry bags made of compostable plastic fall under Category IV. The obligated entities are producers and importers of packaging, brand owners (including online marketplaces and supermarket chains, other than micro and small enterprises), and plastic waste processors.

The amendment of 14 March 2024, G.S.R. 201(E), added manufacturers and importers of plastic raw material such as resin, and makers of compostable items. It also moved the obligation of micro and small producers onto the raw-material manufacturer or importer that supplied them, while those producers still register and declare their packaging category.

What a company does each year

Registration comes first. Schedule II says no covered entity may do business without registering on the CPCB portal, or deal with an entity that has not. Applicants give PAN, GST and company identification numbers. Producers, importers and brand owners file an action plan with their target in tonnes, and file annual returns by 30 June of the next financial year.

The target is a share of the packaging a company put on the market, averaged over the previous two financial years, plus pre-consumer waste from its own production. The schedule set it at 25 percent for 2021-22, 70 percent for 2022-23 and 100 percent from 2023-24. Only plastic that cannot be recycled may go to end-of-life disposal, such as road construction, cement kilns, waste-to-energy or waste-to-oil.

Proof of collection works through certificates. In the CPCB’s words, processors are authorised to generate EPR certificates in proportion to the packaging waste they process, and producers, importers and brand owners buy those certificates to meet their obligations. A company with a surplus can carry it forward or sell it. The 2024 amendment told the CPCB to fix the highest and lowest certificate price at 100 percent and 30 percent of the environmental compensation payable for a shortfall.

That compensation is the penalty. A shortfall is carried forward for up to three years. If it is made good within a year, 75 percent of the compensation is returned, 60 percent within two years and 40 percent within three, and after that the money is forfeited. It sits in a separate escrow account used to collect and recycle the waste the shortfall left behind.

The schedule to 2028-29

The schedule sets three obligations that tighten year by year. Minimum recycling, as a share of each company’s EPR target, is 50 percent in 2024-25 for rigid packaging (Category I), rising to 60, 70 and then 80 percent from 2027-28. For flexible and multilayered packaging (Categories II and III) it is 30 percent, then 40, 50 and 60 percent from 2027-28. Compostable packaging follows the rigid schedule, measured as industrial composting.

Recycled content in new packaging starts in 2025-26 at 30 percent for rigid packaging, 10 percent for flexible and 5 percent for multilayered. By 2028-29 the figures are 60, 20 and 10 percent. Where another law restricts recycled plastic, the CPCB can grant an exemption, and the company then buys certificates from firms that exceeded their own recycled-content obligation.

Brand owners using rigid packaging also owe a reuse share. For containers from 0.9 up to 4.9 litres or kilograms it is 10 percent in 2025-26, rising to 25 percent from 2028-29. For larger containers it is 70 percent, rising to 85. Reuse in food contact is subject to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India.

A further amendment, G.S.R. 237(E) of 31 March 2026, according to LiveLaw and Corporate Professionals, lets companies carry forward an unmet 2025-26 recycled-content target for food-contact packaging for up to three years from 2026-27, with at least one-third of the shortfall met each year. Both summaries add that it makes recycled packaging conform to IS 14534:2023, requires recycled-content labels, and asks the CPCB for audit and verification guidelines within six months.

What the portal and Parliament record

The CPCB’s trial portal for registration opened on 23 March 2022, according to its affidavit to the tribunal of 4 May 2022. By 25 June 2026 the 62,175 registrations were split between 26,564 granted by state pollution control boards and 35,611 granted by the CPCB. By type they were 5,545 producers, 3,695 brand owners and 52,935 importers.

On 23 March 2026 the Minister of State for Environment, Kirti Vardhan Singh, told the Lok Sabha that the portal then showed 60,128 PIBOs and 3,012 processors, and that around 207 lakh tonnes of plastic packaging waste had been recycled since the guidelines took effect. The same reply gives plastic waste generation, from state boards’ data, as 41,26,808 tonnes in 2020-21, 39,01,802 in 2021-22 and 41,36,188 in 2022-23. The reply and the tribunal filing differ in date and in what they count: waste recycled in one, processor credit generated in the other.

State filings show the registration drive at work. Punjab’s reply, compiled in the CPCB’s filing, says its registered PIBOs rose from 37 in March 2023 to 678 in July 2024, and its aggregate EPR target from 22,308 tonnes to 93,335 tonnes. The CPCB wrote to the customs board on 13 June 2025 asking that proof of portal registration be checked when importers clear consignments, and issued show-cause notices on 25 November 2024, 30 December 2024 and 11 March 2026 to companies that missed targets or did not file annual returns for 2022-23 and 2023-24.

What the ban’s enforcement totals say

The 23 March 2026 reply counts 8,61,908 inspections since July 2022, 1,989 tonnes of banned items seized and Rs 19.83 crore (about Rs 198 million) in fines, from state board data and the ministry’s single-use compliance portal. States were asked to run regular drives in fruit and vegetable markets, wholesale markets, flower vendors and carry-bag factories.

The reply also lists what is being built to replace the banned items: a compendium of nearly 1,000 manufacturers and sellers of eco-alternatives, launched on World Environment Day 2025, and a national expo with 150 startups, recyclers and local bodies. The Bureau of Indian Standards had notified IS 18267 for food-serving utensils made from agricultural by-products.

What is still being worked out

Checking the credits is the next stage. In its July 2026 filing the CPCB lists directions of 14 January, 21 February and 8 April 2025 to 18 state boards and committees to act against 90 audited processors, and directions of 25 June 2026 to 15 states and union territories on 134 more, including environmental compensation and cancelling registrations where applicable. A Hindu report of 14 July 2024 on 6 lakh fake certificates in three states is one of the two news items the tribunal is hearing together.

That filing also records a case in Gujarat where the state board found excess certificates at a recycling unit. It ordered closure on 16 November 2023 and levied Rs 5.74 crore in compensation. The unit blamed glitches in the portal, and the CPCB’s own inspection on 1 September 2023 found discrepancies too.

In Down To Earth on 1 September 2026, Sunita Narain wrote that the portal’s data was open only to a closed group of users as of 28 June 2026, and that how the CPCB verifies processed volumes is unclear. The March 2026 amendment gives the CPCB six months from 31 March 2026 to issue audit and verification guidelines.