India's 2026 plastic packaging rules make rigid packs 40% recycled this year, and most Indian brands do not yet publish the numbers that would show compliance

How the four Indian rules fit together

India’s packaging obligations sit inside one instrument, the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, made under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and amended by notification rather than by Parliament⁴. The SPI Regulation Tracker holds four Indian rules among its 79, and all four are in force.

The EPR core (PR-IN-001). Schedule II, the Guidelines on Extended Producer Responsibility for Plastic Packaging, was inserted by G.S.R. 133(E) of 16 February 2022. It gives EPR four channels: reuse, recycling, use of recycled plastic and end-of-life disposal³. Producers, importers and brand owners register on the CPCB portal and settle category-wise targets with certificates from registered plastic waste processors.

Recycled content (PR-IN-002) and reuse (PR-IN-003). These are target clauses inside the same Schedule. G.S.R. 237(E) substituted clauses 7.2(d), 7.3(d) and 7.4(e) for recycled content and clause 7.4(b) for brand-owner reuse, after a draft, G.S.R. 365(E) of 3 June 2025, had been open to objections for 60 days¹.

The single-use item ban (PR-IN-004). Rule 4(2), inserted by G.S.R. 571(E) of 12 August 2021, has barred listed items such as plastic cutlery, straws and film around sweet boxes and cigarette packets since 1 July 2022, with carry bags at 120 microns or more since 31 December 2022⁵. Since 31 March 2026, urban local bodies and Panchayats enforce those bans under rule 12(3A) to (3C).

The packaging categories come from the 2022 text. Category I is rigid plastic packaging; Category II is flexible packaging of single or multilayer construction, plus sheets, carry bags, sachets and pouches; Category III is multilayer packaging with at least one plastic and one non-plastic layer; Category IV is compostable sheets and carry bags³. Schedule II has carried recycled-content and reuse duties since 2022, but SPI has not yet confirmed the 2022 percentages against the official English gazette text, so this article uses only the values printed in G.S.R. 237(E).

What the 2026 notification changed

The headline numbers draw attention, but most of the 2026 text is procedural: it rewrites how the duty is met, evidenced and policed. Exhibit 3 sets out each provision as printed in the notification.

Commencement. The notification states that the rules “shall come into force on the date of their publication in the Official Gazette”¹. For 2025-26, the first obligation year, that meant the carry-forward and exemption arrived on the last day of the year they apply to.

Exemption by rule, not by application. The SPI rule note for PR-IN-002 reads the 2022 text as handling exemptions case by case through CPCB. The 2026 text makes the exemption automatic wherever a named regulator or mandatory standard bars recycled plastic, provided the annual return names the provision relied on. For food and pharmaceutical brand owners, that turns an exemption into a documentation task.

Multilayer counts twice, differently. EPR targets for multilayer packs apply to the complete pack weight under a Ministry office memorandum of 3 February 2023, which CPCB defended before the NGT in April 2025⁴. Recycled content for Category III counts the plastic layers only, under Note 3 of the 2026 text¹. A laminate brand owner therefore runs two weight ledgers for one pack.

The certificate market behind the rules

India has no producer responsibility organisation in the European sense. Obligated companies register individually and meet targets by buying certificates generated by registered processors, so the portal and the processors do the work a scheme does elsewhere (SPI jurisdiction file, IN). CPCB’s July 2026 affidavit is the most recent official count of that market.

Registrations have more than doubled since 2023. The ministry told the Lok Sabha on 7 August 2023 that about 25,953 producers, importers and brand owners and 2,047 processors were registered⁸. By 25 June 2026, CPCB counted 62,175 obligated registrations and 3,079 processors². By SPI’s calculation, that is 2.4 times the obligated count and 1.5 times the processor count, though the two documents may not count on identical bases.

Who registers where. Of the 62,175 registrations, 35,611 were granted by CPCB and 26,564 by State Pollution Control Boards and Pollution Control Committees². An entity in more than two states registers through CPCB, which also levies its environmental compensation (SPI reading of clauses 6.1(b) and 9.3 of the 2022 text, Source 3).

Quality is under scrutiny. On 11 March 2026 CPCB issued revised show-cause notices to companies that had not met obligations or filed annual returns for 2022-23, and on 25 June 2026 it directed the boards of 15 States and Union Territories to act against 134 more audited processors, on top of 90 covered earlier². The NGT has become a regular venue for CPCB’s reporting on portal data and certificate integrity.

Reuse: three rows, one heavy

The reuse duty in clause 7.4(b) binds brand owners of Category I rigid packaging only. G.S.R. 237(E) sets it by pack size and, for large packs, by contents¹. It also adds a legal definition of reuse, in rule 3(ub): using an object again “without changing the object’s structure”. A jar shredded and remoulded is recycling, not reuse.

Row B is where the duty is heavy: suppliers of 20-litre returnable water jars must show 75% reuse this year. Row C covers large packs of other products, such as 5-litre edible-oil or bulk detergent cans, at 10% in 2026-27. Row A reaches mid-size household packs at 15%. Retail packs under 0.9 litres or kilograms, which make up most FMCG units, have no reuse row at all (Source 1; PR-IN-003).

The notification does not say how a reused pack is counted, for example per trip or per unit placed on the market, so the CPCB audit guidance will decide measurement (PR-IN-003). A proviso keeps the brand owner responsible for product quality, authenticity and compliance with mandatory standards when packs go round again. A 2025-26 reuse shortfall may be carried forward on the same one-third-a-year basis as recycled content.

A framework: five obligation archetypes

The same rules land very differently across a portfolio. SPI sorts Indian obligated parties into five archetypes, using two questions the 2026 text makes decisive: how steep is the recycled-content path for the pack mix, and does any relief (the food-contact carry-forward or the regulatory exemption) apply? Exhibit 7 places each archetype and names the SPI Buyers Database companies whose own disclosures show that mix.

Archetype 1 carries the hardest test. Non-food rigid packs face the 40% share in full, with no carry-forward, and recycled HDPE and PET are technically usable in them, so the “not permitted” exemption is unlikely to apply. This is where Dabur’s reported 2% sits.

Archetype 2 has time, but not a discount. The carry-forward spreads a 2025-26 food-contact shortfall over three years; it does not reduce it. The exemption is more powerful, but only where FSSAI or another named body actually bars recycled plastic for that use, and the brand owner must cite it per SKU.

Archetype 3 has low shares on hard materials. Flexible and multilayer shares are 10% and 5% in 2026-27, but they double in 2027-28, and food-grade recycled flexible film is scarce. ITC’s 4.5% flexible figure shows the distance.

Archetype 5 has a single route. Importers cannot count recycled content already in the material they import and must buy “certificate of equivalent quantity” from parties that over-complied¹. Until CPCB opens that exchange, importers have no confirmed way to show compliance.

Scenarios: what the carry-forward really costs

The carry-forward is often described as relief. Exhibit 8 shows its arithmetic for a brand owner using a flat 1,000 tonnes a year of food-contact Category I packs, at three 2025-26 starting points taken from companies’ own reported shares.

SPI calculation. Inputs: Category I shares of 30%, 40%, 50% and 60% for 2025-26 to 2028-29 (G.S.R. 237(E)); carry-forward of the 2025-26 shortfall at the minimum one third a year over 2026-27 to 2028-29 (G.S.R. 237(E)). Starting shares, used as illustrations only: low 2% (Dabur, Category I, FY 2025-26), base 14.9% (Marico, all plastic packaging, FY 2025-26), high 35.5% (ITC, rigid packaging, FY 2025-26). Method: shortfall = 300 tonnes minus recycled tonnes in 2025-26; yearly requirement = the year’s share of 1,000 tonnes plus one third of the shortfall. Assumes no exemption applies, constant volume and no early clearance. Units are tonnes of recycled plastic.

The low case needs 280 more tonnes of food-grade recycled plastic over three years than the high case, an 18.7% increase on 1,500 tonnes by SPI’s calculation. The extra tonnes fall in the same years when every other food brand is moving from 40% to 60%, so the carry-forward pushes demand into the tightest part of the supply curve.

For a non-food rigid packer (archetype 1) there is no carry-forward. On the same 1,000 tonnes, a 2% performer that does not change its packs is 380 tonnes short in 2026-27, 480 tonnes short in 2027-28 and 580 tonnes short from 2028-29, by SPI’s calculation. Each shortfall is a separate year’s obligation, not a rolling balance.

Where Indian brand owners stand

The SPI Buyers Database records 179 public packaging targets from 42 brand owners and retailers. Six are headquartered in India: Dabur India, Hindustan Unilever, ITC Limited, Marico, Nestlé India and Tata Consumer Products. Each figure below comes from the company’s own report; SPI does not audit them.

SPI calculation. For HUL, the 2026-27 recycled-content requirement on a flat 128,000-tonne footprint lies between 6,400 tonnes (if all packs were Category III at 5%) and 51,200 tonnes (if all were Category I at 40%), before any exemption. Category II at 10% would be 12,800 tonnes. HUL does not state whether its tonnages are calendar or financial years. The width of that range is itself the finding: without a category split, neither the company nor an outside reader can size the obligation.

Nestlé India reports rPET and rPE at 1.5% of input material for the 15 months to 31 March 2025, up from 0.70%, and about 25,000 tonnes of plastic managed in 2025-26^18,19. Tata Consumer Products reports 80% of packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable and full EPR compliance for FY 2025-26, without a recycled-content figure²⁰.

Penalties and enforcement

Paying for a miss does not settle it. Schedule II levies environmental compensation on the polluter pays principle and sets no rupee rate in the Schedule itself (Source 3; PR-IN-001). SPI’s reading of the Hindi-language 2022 annexure is that the unmet quantity carries forward for three years and part of the compensation is returned on a falling scale if the gap is closed; SPI has not yet confirmed those clause 9.5 terms against the official English gazette text.

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, Act No. 18 of 2023, received assent on 11 August 2023 and recast section 15 as a penalty of “not less than ten thousand rupees but which may extend to fifteen lakh rupees”, plus INR 10,000 for every day a contravention continues^6,7. SPI has not yet confirmed the date the amended section 15 commenced, so this article does not state it.

How India compares

India is one of four jurisdictions in the SPI Regulation Tracker with recycled-content rules, alongside the EU, California and New Jersey (6 rules in all). The EU’s PPWR sets 30% for single-use plastic beverage bottles from 2030 (PR-EU-004); the SPI Ledger piece PPWR after 12 August 2026 explains why other EU percentages are not stated there.

What remains unclear

The SPI rule notes list the open points as of 14 October 2026:

• CPCB’s Note 2 audit and verification guidelines and the importer certificate exchange: SPI has not yet confirmed either is published (PR-IN-002).
• How reuse is counted, per trip or per unit, is not set out in the notification (PR-IN-003).
• Whether medium enterprises are excluded as brand owners differs between the 2022 text as SPI reads it and the CPCB reply of April 2025, which lists only micro and small enterprises (PR-IN-001).
• The annual return date: SPI’s reading of clause 10.6 of the 2022 text gives 30 June, while the 2022 CPCB affidavit quotes 30 April in one paragraph. SPI uses 30 June and suggests planning for the earlier date until CPCB confirms.
• Whether a reused pack reduces the recycling base is not stated in the notification (PR-IN-003).