Nonrecyclable food and beverage packaging dominates the trash littering the Indian Himalayas, according to a recent report.
Since 2018, regional alliances Zero Waste Himalaya and Integrated Mountain Initiative have organized an annual campaign during the last week of May called The Himalayan Cleanup. Volunteers from schools and civil society organizations clean up sites across the Himalayas, followed by an audit identifying waste types and associated brands.
In 2024, more than 15,000 volunteers across nine Indian Himalayan states collected 121,739 pieces of waste. Of this, 106,856, or nearly 90%, was some sort of plastic.
Food and beverage packaging made up 84.2% of all plastic waste, of which 77% was nonrecyclable multilayered plastics, including food wrappers, beverage bottles, juice boxes, bottle caps, sachets, cutlery, bags, straws and lollipop sticks.
Being nonrecyclable, these plastics hold no value for waste pickers and scrap dealers, so they are “strewn across the Himalayas and piling up in the landfills,” Kapil Chhetri, from Zero Waste Himalaya, told Mongabay by email. “The logic of being able to recycle ourselves of this mess is clearly not possible as the product design is single use and nonrecyclable.”
The 2024 cleanup’s brand audit revealed PepsiCo — owner of brands like Lays, Uncle Chips, Bingo and Kurkure — was the top polluting brand for the third straight year.
A “dramatic increase” in bottles of PepsiCo-owned Sting, a sugar-rich energy drink, has been a particularly “alarming finding,” Chhetri said, adding that 20% of all beverage bottles collected during the cleanup were Sting bottles, up from 11% in 2022.
Although energy drinks like Sting are often packaged in PET bottles, which is recyclable, Chhetri said in the Himalayas even PET adds to the trash because of waste management challenges there.
Chhetri added the rising popularity of sugary beverages in the Himalayas, as suggested by the annual cleanups, “throws additional challenges to the well-being of communities and children besides the waste issue.”
“It is particularly frightening given the warning label on Sting is ‘not recommended for children, pregnant or lactating mothers,’” Chhetri said. “Most often it is children who are drinking Sting as it is sold to them despite the label. There is also no way to restrict the number of bottles consumed.”
PepsiCo and PepsiCo India didn’t respond to Mongabay’s emailed questions by the time of publishing.
The 2024 cleanup found that while tourists contribute to plastic waste at tourist spots, particularly along waterbodies and rivers, local communities also add to Himalayan plastic waste.
“With dramatic changes in consumption patterns and higher tourist inflows due to excessive warming in the plains, the existing management systems are unable to cope with the rapid increase and changes in type of waste,” Chhetri said.
The report calls for better implementation of the extended producer responsibility, a key component of India’s plastic waste law, which makes producers and brand owners responsible for managing their plastic waste.
Banner image: Student volunteers with trash collected during the 2024 Himalayan Cleanup campaign. Image courtesy of The Himalayan Cleanup.
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