On July 1, 2022, a national ban on identified single-use plastic items took effect. The Ministry of Environment had prohibited their manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use.
A later study by the consumer organization Consumer VOICE found banned items still available at 88 percent of the places surveyed in Delhi and at 55 percent in Bengaluru.
On November 4, 2019, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra heard a case on air pollution in Delhi. “They are passing the buck to each other…whether the Centre should do or Delhi should do…it can’t go on like this,” the court said, according to Scroll.
On November 15, 2021, a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana heard a case on Delhi’s air again. It told the government’s lawyers: “So you are passing the buck to municipal corporations.”
From 2016 to 2019, Paani Foundation held the Satyamev Jayate Water Cup in Maharashtra, “an annual, 45-day competition.” Villages competed in watershed management and water conservation work. “At the heart of this competition was ‘shramadaan’ (voluntary labour).” In all, “more than 4,700 villages in 76 talukas had joined the movement for change.”
In August 2018, floods covered large parts of Kerala. The state’s Fisheries Minister, J. Mercykutty Amma, said that fishermen in 669 mechanized country boats had rescued 65,000 people.
“We shared location information on WhatsApp,” one of them, Rony Thomas, told ThePrint.
In 1984 James R. “Bobby” Evans, a district engineer for the Texas highway department in Tyler, saw trash blow out of the back of a pickup truck. He challenged a local group to “adopt” a section of highway. The Tyler Civitan Club took a two-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 69. On March 9, 1985, the signs went up: “First Adopt-a-Highway in the Nation.”
Today nearly 90,000 groups take part, in 49 states and in other countries. Each adopted stretch carries a sign with the name of the group responsible for it.
In 2010 Cosima Dannoritzer’s documentary Kaufen für die Müllhalde, buying for the dump, opened in many European cinemas. It was about products that are built to break early. In Germany, Stefan Schridde founded an association and a website against such products, Murks? Nein Danke!, botched work? No thanks!
In a repair café, volunteers help people mend broken things. In October 2018, 660 such initiatives were registered in Germany. In September 2026 about 1,900 were listed. The foundation anstiftung runs the online directory where the initiatives are listed. The idea is usually traced to the Netherlands in 2009.
In February 2016 the Federal Environment Agency published a study on how long electrical devices are used. Among large household appliances, the share replaced within five years because of a defect rose from 3.5 percent in 2004 to 8.3 percent in 2013. Many devices, from smartphones to flat-screen televisions, were replaced although they still worked well. The study could not prove planned obsolescence.
The agency’s president, Maria Krautzberger, said that Germany must consider minimum requirements for product lifetime and quality. She spoke of eine Art Mindesthaltbarkeit, a kind of minimum durability, for electrical devices. The word comes from the best-before date on food.
Miele’s TwinDos system doses the detergent by itself, according to the hardness of the water, the size of the load and the type of soiling. A sensor shows on the display when the detergent container is empty.
Miele cites a study by the Öko-Institut, completed in 2013, on the savings from automatic dosing. The institute’s project dealt with dosing errors that come from consumer behavior.
SERO was the East German system for collecting used materials. The name stood for VEB Kombinat Sekundär-Rohstofferfassung, the state combine for collecting secondary raw materials. SERO paid five pfennigs for a bottle and ten pfennigs for a kilo of paper. Children in the Young Pioneers, the state youth organization, collected from house to house.
The reason was a shortage of raw materials and a policy of self-sufficiency. According to a conference presentation on the system, the recycling rate in 1989 was 54.5 percent for paper and 65.5 percent for bottles.