ANNOUNCEMENTS
Circular economy refers to repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products to make new products. This thesis takes inspiration from the concept of circular economy to design a take-back system (also known as, deposit-refund system) which can help to recycle glass packaging waste and can induce consumers to participate in it. It primarily focuses on take-back system wherein manufacturers take back the used glass bottles/containers for recycling. Conventionally, the onus of recycling the packaging waste falls upon the manufacturer but in modern times, we believe, the manufacturers alone should not be burdened with recycling responsibility and multiple stakeholders should contribute to recycle of packaging waste effectively. Take-back system has numerous benefits like it eliminates the packaging waste of products, which is otherwise dumped to landfills, reduces pollution and diseases emerging from such waste, saves resources and energy. Deposit-refund system is very popular and successful in developed countries but unfortunately, it has failed to draw consumer participation to facilitate packaging waste collection for convenience goods and take-back system for electronics items is also in its infancy stage in developing countries like India. Through my thesis, I have altered the conventional structure of deposit-refund system to come up with a ‘modified take-back system’, that can be successfully implemented in developing countries. I conducted primary survey to assess consumers’ perception of recycling the packaging waste and their willingness to participate in the modified take-back system. Logistic regression model has been used for analyzing the factors that affect the chances of consumers’ willingness to participate in the modified take-back system and their statistical significance. This thesis addresses the issue of failure of deposit-refund system in developing countries, like India to retrieve and recycle packaging waste, and brings out the importance of using tailored approach for designing waste management policies in the context of developing countries.
Keywords: circular economy, packaging waste, deposit-refund system, take-back system.
