Que: From your perspective, what are the most critical drivers accelerating India’s shift from a linear to a circular economic model?

Ans: India’s shift toward a circular economy is no longer a matter of aspiration it is being driven by structural compulsions that make linearity unsustainable. Urban India generates approximately 1.85 lakh tonnes of solid waste every day. Of the waste that is collected, only a fraction is scientifically processed; a significant proportion ends up in landfills and dumpsites. At current rates, India would require an estimated 1,450 square kilometres of additional land for waste disposal by 2050 roughly the size of Delhi. These are not abstract projections; they represent an urgent resource and land-use crisis.

The first and most powerful driver is regulatory momentum. The notification of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026 in January this year marks the most significant overhaul of India’s waste governance framework in a decade. These rules mandate four-stream segregation at source wet, dry, sanitary, and special care waste replacing the earlier wet-dry binary. They introduce the Extended Bulk Waste Generator Responsibility (EBWGR) framework, which holds large generators accountable for on-site processing. They mandate a centralised digital portal for end-to-end waste tracking, and they require industries, particularly cement plants, to progressively replace up to 15 percent of solid fuel with Refuse Derived Fuel over six years. Alongside this, India’s Extended Producer Responsibility regime for plastics, e-waste, and batteries has matured significantly, and circular economy action plans now cover ten distinct waste categories.

The second driver is resource security. India has 100 percent import dependency for lithium, cobalt, and nickel—minerals that are foundational to the energy transition. We source approximately 60 percent of our rare earth imports from China, and recent Chinese export restrictions on seven critical rare earth elements have exposed the fragility of these supply chains. The approval of the National Critical Mineral Mission in January 2025, with an outlay of INR 16,300 crore and expected PSU investment of Rs 18,000 crore, signals that the government now views circularity recovering materials from end-of-life products as a matter of national economic security, not just environmental policy.

The third driver is demographic and economic. India’s urban population is expected to reach 600 million by 2031, and municipal waste generation is projected to rise to 165 million tonnes annually by 2030. The waste management market, valued at approximately USD 13.5 billion in 2025, is projected to reach USD 17-18 billion by 2030. Private sector investment in recycling infrastructure, waste-to-energy technologies, and resource recovery is accelerating because the economics increasingly favour circular models over linear disposal.

Taken together, these drivers’ regulatory architecture, resource vulnerability, and demographic pressure are converging to make circularity central to India’s long-term economic strategy, fully aligned with the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision that CII’s National Circular Economy Framework, Edition 3, explicitly supports.

Que: How do you assess the progress India has made in converting waste streams into valuable resources over the past few years?

Ans: India’s progress in converting waste to value has been real but uneven. The headline numbers tell a story of improvement: waste processing rates moved from approximately 18 percent in 2014 to around 70 percent by 2021 under the Swachh Bharat Mission, which is a significant institutional achievement. However, if we look beneath the surface, the picture is more nuanced. India generates over 62 million tonnes of waste annually. Of this, roughly 43 million tonnes is collected, but only about 12 million tonnes receives scientific treatment. The remaining 31 million tonnes still ends up in landfills or dumpsites. The absolute gap between generation and proper treatment has, in some respects, widened because waste volumes have grown faster than infrastructure.

That said, there are areas where India has demonstrated genuine leadership. Our PET recycling rate stands at approximately 60 percent +, which is substantially ahead of Japan at 72 percent, Europe at 48 percent, and the United States at 31 percent. The recycled PET industry in India is valued at USD 400–550 million and represents a mature circular value chain. Similarly, in co-processing of hazardous waste through cement kilns, India has built meaningful capacity, and the new SWM Rules 2026 now mandate progressive RDF usage, which will further scale this pathway.

In specific waste streams, the trajectory is encouraging. NITI Aayog released three dedicated Circular Economy reports in January 2026 covering end-of-life vehicles, waste tyres, and lithium-ion batteries, signalling that the analytical groundwork for high-impact sectors is now being laid at the highest levels of policy. India is the third-largest tyre producer and consumer globally, generating 1.5–2 million tonnes of waste tyres annually, but recycling in this space remains dominated by informal and often environmentally harmful practices. This is precisely the kind of waste stream where the shift from informal to formal, technology-enabled processing represents an enormous economic and environmental opportunity.

The most critical area requiring attention is the informal recycling sector. An estimated four million or more waste pickers across India handle roughly 15–20 percent of municipal waste, performing segregation and material recovery at significant personal health risk and virtually no formal recognition within the value chain. The SWM Rules 2016 took a first step by formally acknowledging waste pickers; the 2026 Rules carry this forward. Integrating these workers into the formal circular economy—through recognition, skills training, and fair compensation is not just a social imperative; it is an efficiency imperative, because they are the most effective last-mile segregation network the country has.

Overall, the direction of travel is positive, but the distance still to cover is substantial. The task now is to close the gap between collection and scientific processing, scale formal recycling across underserved waste streams, and ensure that the new regulatory frameworks translate into measurable outcomes on the ground.

Que: With the launch of National Circular Economy Framework – Edition 3, the focus has clearly moved from awareness to implementation. What are the most significant advancements introduced in this edition compared to the earlier frameworks?

Ans: The National Circular Economy Framework has evolved meaningfully across its three editions, and it is important to understand that evolution to appreciate what Edition 3 represents. NCEF 1, launched in 2023, introduced the foundational narrative for India’s circular transition establishing the conceptual case for why circularity matters to a growing economy. NCEF 2, released in 2024, deepened the analytical base significantly, covering sixteen priority materials with detailed sectoral insights. NCEF 3, unveiled in November 2025 at the 10th International Conference on Waste to Worth Technologies, marks a decisive shift from analysis to action, expanding coverage to twenty priority materials and providing implementation-ready roadmaps for each.

The most significant advancement in Edition 3 is the introduction of measurable targets for 2030 and beyond, supported by clearly defined baselines for each material. This is what distinguishes a framework from a roadmap. Each material chapter whether it addresses paper and packaging, construction and demolition waste, lithium-ion batteries, end-of-life vehicles, waste tyres, or sanitary waste—now outlines specific challenges, sets quantifiable goals, and details actionable pathways. For context, India’s lithium-ion battery demand is forecast to reach 248 GWh by 2035, driven by EV expansion, making battery circularity not merely an environmental consideration but a strategic supply chain imperative.

Equally important is the accountability architecture that NCEF 3 establishes. It assigns clearly differentiated roles to industry, government, financial institutions, and urban local bodies. This is a departure from earlier frameworks where responsibility was articulated in broad terms. Edition 3 recognises that scaling circular solutions requires coordinated action across the entire ecosystem from policy design to capital deployment to municipal execution.

The framework’s alignment with national priorities is also more deliberate in this edition. NCEF 3 explicitly connects circularity to Viksit Bharat 2047, positioning resource efficiency as a pillar of India’s long-term economic competitiveness rather than a standalone environmental agenda. It aligns with Mission LiFE on the demand side and with Atmanirbhar Bharat on the supply side, particularly in the context of reducing import dependency for critical materials. This is reinforced by broader policy momentum: NITI Aayog’s January 2026 reports on ELVs, waste tyres, and lithium-ion batteries echo and complement the NCEF 3 material chapters.

At a practical level, the launch of the Young 4R Awards alongside the 6th edition of CII’s 4R Awards in 2025 signals that the ecosystem around NCEF is deepening. Nearly 50 organisations were felicitated for leadership in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Repair practices, and a Compendium of Best Practices was released to enable peer learning. India has also formally expressed its candidacy to host the World Circular Economy Forum in 2026, which would be a significant moment for the country to showcase NCEF 3’s implementation progress on a global stage.

In summary, NCEF 3 is the point at which India’s circular economy discourse transitions from “why” and “what” to “how” and “by when.” It provides the granular, sector-specific tools that industry and policymakers need to operationalise circularity within India’s complex socio-economic landscape.

Que: Many cities in India still struggle with waste segregation and processing capacity. What technological or systemic interventions are necessary to improve efficiency across the entire waste management value chain?

Ans: The gap between waste generation and processing capacity in Indian cities is fundamentally a systems problem, not merely a technology deficit. The numbers illustrate this clearly: India has over 4,000 waste processing plants, yet only about a quarter of them operate at full capacity. Delhi, which generates roughly 600 grams of waste per person per day, processes about 64 percent of its collected waste but the remaining 36 percent continues to feed legacy landfills like Ghazipur, Bhalaswa, and Okhla, which have become symbols of systemic failure. The interventions required span the entire value chain, from household behaviour to industrial offtake.

The most consequential systemic intervention currently underway is the SWM Rules 2026, which fundamentally reframe how waste is governed in India. Three features stand out. First, the shift to mandatory four-stream segregation wet, dry, sanitary, and special care waste replaces the earlier wet-dry binary, which was widely acknowledged as insufficient. This alone, if enforced, would transform the quality of feedstock entering processing facilities and dramatically improve recovery rates. Second, the introduction of Extended Bulk Waste Generator Responsibility (EBWGR) brings a new category of accountability. Entities generating 100 kilograms or more of waste per day or occupying 20,000 square metres or more of built-up area, must now process wet waste on-site or obtain a certified EBWGR certificate. Given that bulk generators account for approximately 30 percent of total urban solid waste, this single provision addresses a substantial portion of the problem. Third, the development of a centralised digital portal by CPCB to track waste from generation through collection, transportation, processing, and disposal replaces the fragmented physical reporting system and introduces the kind of data transparency that enables both compliance monitoring and operational planning.

On the technology front, the priorities are clear. Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), which the new rules specifically mandate, need to be scaled across cities. These facilities, equipped with automated sorting systems and increasingly with AI-enabled optical sorting, can process mixed dry waste streams far more efficiently than manual methods alone. For organic waste, decentralised bio-methanation and composting units at the ward or neighbourhood level reduce transportation costs and produce usable outputs—biogas and compost close to the point of generation. For non-recyclable combustible waste, the new RDF mandate requiring industries to progressively use Refuse Derived Fuel creates a structured demand-side pull that has been absent until now.

Equally important are the systemic interventions that create the enabling environment. Graded compliance timelines under SWM 2026 eighteen months for large cities, twenty-four for medium, thirty-six for smaller ULBs allow phased implementation. Financial disincentives, such as higher landfill user fees for mixed waste, make it more expensive to dump than to process, shifting the economic calculus for municipalities. And the requirement for time-bound biomining and bioremediation of legacy dumpsites addresses the accumulated burden of decades of mismanagement.

However, regulatory architecture alone will not solve the problem if household-level segregation rates remain below 25 percent nationally, which is the current reality. Sustained behavioural change through community engagement, ward-level monitoring, and digital nudges must accompany infrastructure investment. The most sophisticated MRF is only as effective as the quality of waste it receives. Getting segregation right at source remains the single most impactful intervention in the entire value chain.

Que: What policy measures or incentives are still required to accelerate private sector investments in circular infrastructure and waste-to-worth technologies?

Ans: Private capital follows predictability. The single most important condition for accelerating investment in circular infrastructure is a stable, consistently enforced regulatory regime that creates long-term demand visibility. The SWM Rules 2026 make a meaningful contribution here: by mandating that industries progressively replace up to 15 percent of solid fuel with RDF, they create a guaranteed offtake pathway for waste-derived fuel. By imposing higher landfill fees for unsegregated waste, they make processing economically superior to dumping. And by introducing graded criteria for faster land allocation for waste processing facilities, they address one of the most persistent practical bottlenecks that private developers face. These are structural demand-side signals that the investment community can price.

That said, significant gaps remain. The first is in project financing. Circular infrastructure whether an integrated waste management facility, a battery recycling plant, or an advanced e-waste processing unit—typically involves high upfront capital expenditure with longer payback periods than conventional projects. What is needed is a dedicated suite of financial instruments: viability gap funding for commercially marginal but environmentally essential projects, green taxonomy alignment that allows these investments to access lower-cost capital through India’s growing green bond market and RBI’s green deposit framework, and blended finance structures that de-risk early-stage circular ventures. SIDBI’s green financing initiatives and the potential extension of Production Linked Incentive (PLI)-type schemes to cover recycling infrastructure, critical mineral refining, and secondary material processing would significantly improve the investment calculus.

The second gap is in feedstock security. No private investor will commit capital to a recycling facility without reasonable assurance of consistent feedstock supply. This is where the success of source segregation, the EBWGR framework, and the digital tracking portal under SWM 2026 become directly relevant to investment decisions. If these provisions are enforced effectively, they create the reliable waste streams that processing facilities need to operate at viable utilisation rates. Without them, even well-capitalised facilities will struggle with the throughput volatility that has plagued the sector.

The third area requiring attention is the downstream value chain for recovered materials. India needs to build deeper domestic markets for secondary raw materials. The government’s recent moves are encouraging: the approval of INR 7,280 crore for rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing in November 2025, the announcement of dedicated rare earth corridors in Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu in Budget 2026–27, and the broader National Critical Mineral Mission all signal an intent to build value chains that close the loop from waste recovery to advanced manufacturing. Under the CITIIS 2.0 initiative, agreements worth over INR 1,800 crore have been finalised across 18 cities for integrated urban sustainability projects, including waste management upgrades. These are the kinds of coordinated policy signals that build investor confidence.

Ultimately, what the private sector needs is not a single policy measure but a coherent ecosystem: enforcement that creates demand, financing that manages risk, and downstream markets that absorb recovered materials. The building blocks are now being assembled; the challenge is implementation at speed and scale.

Que: Your organisation operates across diverse waste streams including hazardous waste, municipal waste, biomedical waste, and e-waste. How do integrated sustainability solutions help address these complex waste challenges holistically?

Ans: Each of the waste streams we manage hazardous industrial waste, municipal solid waste, biomedical waste, e-waste operates under a distinct regulatory regime. Hazardous waste is governed by the HWM Rules, biomedical waste by the BMW Rules, e-waste by the E-Waste Management Rules, and municipal waste now by the newly notified SWM Rules 2026. Each set of rules prescribes specific handling, treatment, and disposal protocols, with compliance oversight split between central and state pollution control boards. For a fragmented operator, navigating even one of these regimes is demanding. For an integrated operator, the complexity is multiplied but so is the opportunity to create value.

The core advantage of an integrated model is the ability to build cross-stream synergies that a single-stream operator simply cannot achieve. Consider co-processing: high-calorific non-recyclable waste from municipal streams can be processed into Refuse Derived Fuel and used in cement kilns, which simultaneously addresses the municipal waste challenge and provides an energy recovery pathway for industrial partners. The SWM Rules 2026 now formalise this by mandating progressive RDF usage in industry, effectively creating a structured linkage between municipal waste processing and industrial energy consumption that integrated operators are uniquely positioned to serve.

Similarly, in biomedical waste management, the scale requirements are considerable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, daily biomedical waste generation from healthcare facilities alone peaked at over 200 tonnes per day during major waves. Managing this safely requires not just incineration and autoclaving capacity but also the logistics, compliance tracking, and operational redundancy that come from operating across geographies and waste types. An integrated platform can absorb volume surges across one waste category by leveraging excess capacity in adjacent streams something a standalone biomedical waste operator cannot do.

In e-waste and hazardous waste, the integration advantage extends to material recovery. Metals, rare earths, and other valuable materials recovered from end-of-life electronics and industrial residues can be channelled back into secondary material markets, supporting the circular economy objectives that India’s National Critical Mineral Mission and NCEF 3 are designed to advance. The ability to manage the full lifecycle from collection and characterisation through treatment, recovery, and responsible residue disposal within a single operational and compliance framework reduces leakage, improves recovery rates, and provides clients with a complete chain-of-custody assurance that regulators and ESG frameworks increasingly demand.

At a strategic level, the integrated model aligns with where India’s regulatory and market trajectory is heading. As the SWM Rules 2026 expand the scope of generator responsibility, as EPR regimes mature across plastics and electronics, and as the polluter-pays principle gains enforcement teeth, the demand for operators who can provide end-to-end, multi-stream, compliance-assured waste management will only grow. The future belongs to platforms, not point solutions.

Que: International collaboration and technology partnerships are increasingly critical for sustainability innovation. How can India leverage global expertise while building strong domestic circular value chains?

Ans: International collaboration in the circular economy space is not a matter of choice for India it is a strategic necessity dictated by the structure of global supply chains. India currently has 100 percent import dependency for lithium, cobalt, and nickel, and sources roughly 60 percent of its rare earth element imports from China. In recent months, China’s imposition of export restrictions on seven critical rare earth elements samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium has underscored just how vulnerable import-dependent nations are to geopolitical leverage. For India, building international partnerships is not about filling a knowledge gap alone; it is about securing the material foundations of the energy transition and the circular economy.

India has begun to move on this front. KABIL (Khanij Bidesh India Ltd) signed an agreement with CAMYEN SE, a state-owned enterprise in Argentina’s Catamarca province, in January 2024 for lithium exploration covering 15,703 hectares. Bilateral mineral cooperation agreements are being pursued with Australia, Canada, Chile, and several African nations including Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo. India is an active participant in the Mineral Security Partnership; a multilateral initiative aimed at diversifying critical mineral supply chains away from concentrated sources. These are important diplomatic moves, but they need to be complemented by technology transfer and domestic capability-building.

On the technology front, the areas where global expertise can accelerate India’s circular transition are specific and well-defined. Advanced lithium-ion battery recycling is one: as India’s LIB demand is projected to reach 248 GWh by 2035, the volume of end-of-life batteries requiring recovery will grow exponentially, and India needs hydrometallurgical and direct recycling technologies that are currently at commercial scale primarily in the EU, Japan, and South Korea. High-efficiency waste-to-energy technologies—including advanced gasification and pyrolysis represent another: the Japanese partnership model for WtE, which combines public financing with proven technology and local operational capacity, has been successfully deployed across Southeast Asia and is directly relevant to India’s context. Contaminated site remediation is a third area: technologies for soil decontamination, groundwater treatment, and brownfield redevelopment that have been refined over decades in Europe and North America can be adapted for India’s growing inventory of legacy industrial sites.

At the same time, India brings substantial domestic strengths to these partnerships. The country has a vibrant ecosystem of recycling entrepreneurs and circular economy startups, a large pool of engineering talent, and critically the scale of waste volumes that makes India one of the most commercially significant markets for circular solutions globally. India’s PET recycling rate of approximately 90 percent and its extensive, if informal, waste sorting and recovery networks represent operational capabilities that many developed economies lack. The integration of India’s 4+ million waste pickers into formal systems, supported by digital traceability and skills training, offers a model of inclusive circularity that is uniquely Indian and potentially exportable.

The institutional architecture for these collaborations is also taking shape. The National Critical Mineral Mission’s mandate includes overseas mineral asset acquisition, processing technology partnerships, and research collaboration. The government has announced dedicated rare earth corridors in four states, which will require technology partnerships for extraction, refining, and magnet manufacturing. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, which encourages member states to build national stockpiles and explore joint procurement, offers a regulatory model from which India can draw lessons. Japan’s JOGMEC maintains strategic mineral reserves sufficient for 60–180 days a stockpiling approach India is now beginning to consider.

India’s formal candidacy to host the World Circular Economy Forum in 2026 is a tangible expression of the country’s ambition to move from participant to convenor in the global circular economy conversation. If realised, it would be a significant platform to showcase NCEF 3’s implementation progress, demonstrate India’s domestic innovations, and catalyse the kind of technology and investment partnerships that will define the next decade of India’s circular transition. The strategy must be twofold: leverage the best of global expertise where India has genuine gaps and build domestic value chains that ensure the country is not merely a market for imported circular solutions but a co-developer and, eventually, an exporter of them.