India’s transition towards a circular economy requires a shift from managing waste as a disposal challenge to managing materials as valuable resources. At the urban level, this transition depends on the ability of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to create systems that ensure effective segregation, collection, recovery, recycling, traceability, and reintegration of materials into productive use. The Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies (RCUES), AIILSG, Mumbai, convened a Leaders’ Roundtable on ‘Viksit Bharat through Circular Economy: Strengthening Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) for a Resource-Efficient Urban India.’

The roundtable brought together perspectives from ULBs, academia, international practitioners, consultants, NGOs and professionals from the waste-management and circular-economy ecosystem. The dialogue examined the complete circular chain and focused on the practical question of how cities can convert collection into measurable recovery and recovery into viable circular value.

From Collection to Circularity

A key outcome of the discussion was the recognition that collection alone cannot be treated as the measure of circularity. ULBs may achieve high collection and segregation levels, yet a significant gap can remain between the material collected and the quantity that ultimately reaches authorized processors as commercially usable feedstock. The roundtable therefore highlighted the need for ULB performance indicators to increasingly focus on actual recovery and the subsequent movement of material through the recycling chain. This shift affects how cities plan, monitor, and evaluate plastic-waste systems.

With the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules, 2026 requiring four-stream segregation and online tracking of the waste chain, the discussion reinforced the need to link regulatory compliance to measurable outcomes rather than treating collection and segregation as endpoints. 

Quality of Feedstock as a Critical Link

The discussion also identified feedstock quality as a decisive factor in determining whether collected plastic can actually enter commercially viable recycling processes. Contamination, inconsistent segregation, and inadequate aggregation can reduce the value of recovered material and limit the utilization of existing recycling capacity. This led to an important outcome: expanding recycling infrastructure needs to be accompanied by strengthening the upstream municipal systems that supply material to recyclers. Improving segregation, aggregation and consistency of feedstock can help bridge the gap between the material generated by cities and the material that recycling facilities can effectively process.

Making EPR More Connected to the Physical Material Chain

The roundtable identified the need to strengthen the relationship between Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and municipal waste-management systems. While producers have EPR obligations, ULBs frequently remain responsible for the physical collection and sorting systems through which post-consumer materials enter the recovery chain. The discussion therefore highlighted the importance of clarifying the role of ULBs within EPR arrangements, including how the costs of municipal collection and sorting of EPR-covered plastics should be addressed.

A further outcome was the recognition that certificate-based compliance needs to be complemented by stronger material traceability. EPR systems would provide greater transparency if they could demonstrate not only that an equivalent quantity of material has been processed, but also where material originated, what type of material was recovered and how it moved through the recycling chain. Geographic and material-level traceability was therefore identified as an important area for strengthening circular-economy accountability.

Building Markets, Not Just Recycling Capacity

The discussions highlighted that a functioning circular economy requires more than collection infrastructure and recycling plants. It requires stable markets for recovered materials. It examined the gap between reported waste generation and available recycling capacity and considered whether investment should focus exclusively on additional processing infrastructure or also on improving the quality and reliability of material supplied to existing facilities. This showed the need for a value-chain approach in which municipal systems, recyclers, producers and markets are connected. The objective is not simply to process more waste, but to create conditions in which recovered materials can consistently return to productive economic use.

Scaling Innovation Beyond Pilots

Another outcome was the identification of scale and institutional adoption as critical challenges for circular-economy innovation. International experience discussed during the roundtable pointed towards the importance of institutional mechanisms that can help cities move from collection-based systems towards functioning markets for secondary materials. The dialogue also examined why innovative recycling and circular-economy solutions often struggle to move beyond pilot projects and achieve city-scale adoption. For ULBs, this points to the need for an enabling ecosystem that combines technology with procurement mechanisms, institutional capacity, market linkages, investment and appropriate policy support.

Measuring and Reducing Plastic Leakage

The roundtable further expanded the definition of urban circularity by bringing attention to plastic leakage from municipal systems. For cities, particularly those with extensive drainage and coastal interfaces, material that escapes collection and recovery systems can create environmental impacts beyond the conventional waste-management chain. A more comprehensive approach to urban plastic management would therefore need to consider both recovery within the circular chain and prevention of leakage outside it. This creates an opportunity for ULBs to develop indicators that capture not only recycling performance but also the effectiveness of systems in preventing plastic from entering environmentally sensitive pathways.

Keeping the Circular Economy Inclusive

The transition towards formalised and digitally tracked EPR systems also raises questions of inclusion. Existing plastic recovery systems depend significantly on informal waste pickers and aggregators. The roundtable highlighted the need to ensure that increasing formalisation does not disconnect these actors from the value chain.

This establishes inclusion as an important dimension of circularity alongside environmental and economic performance. Future circular-economy systems will need to recognise existing recovery networks while creating pathways for greater integration, transparency and participation.

Data as the Foundation for Better Municipal Decisions

The discussion identified evidence gaps as another barrier to effective circularity. Cities are generating increasing amounts of information on waste generation, collection and recycling, but there remains insufficient visibility into what happens to materials after they enter the recovery chain.

Strengthening city-level research, material-flow assessments, traceability systems and outcome-based indicators can help ULBs identify where materials are being lost and determine which interventions produce measurable improvements. Better evidence can consequently support more targeted investment and more accountable municipal planning.

Addressing the Economics of Low-Value Plastics

The roundtable ultimately brought the discussion to the economic question underlying circularity: who bears the cost of making difficult and low-value plastic streams circular? Cities are expected to strengthen collection, segregation, recovery and traceability; producers have EPR responsibilities; and recyclers require material that is technically and economically viable to process.

This highlights the need for stronger alignment between responsibility, financing and value creation across the circular chain. High-value materials may already have established markets, while low-value and contaminated fractions require additional interventions to become economically viable. Developing mechanisms that address this gap will be important for achieving comprehensive rather than selective circularity.

From Roundtable Dialogue to Measurable Outcomes

The roundtable established that strengthening urban circularity requires a transition from activity-based waste management to outcome-based resource management. The focus needs to move from how much plastic is collected to how much is recovered, how much reaches viable recycling processes, how much can be traced through the value chain, and how much ultimately returns to productive use.

The discussions also pointed towards several areas for future action, summarised in the box overleaf. The roundtable closed with a forward-looking challenge: if the dialogue were reconvened six months later, what measurable intervention should be visible?

That question captures the larger message of the dialogue. The pathway to Viksit Bharat through a circular economy will depend on converting policy commitments and stakeholder dialogue into measurable improvements at the city level. By strengthening ULBs as active participants in circular value chains, India can move towards urban systems in which materials are not simply collected and discarded, but recovered, tracked, valued and returned to productive use—supporting resource efficiency, environmental resilience and sustainable urban development.