Turning the tide on ‘fugitive plastic’: Mother Dairy bets on soil-degradable pouches

New Delhi: Every day in Delhi-NCR, lakhs of milk pouches are emptied, discarded and replaced. While many enter recycling streams, a significant number do not. They end up in landfills, clog drains and litter open spaces, adding steadily to the capital’s plastic pollution burden.Experts describe such waste as “fugitive plastic” — material that escapes formal collection and recovery systems. The problem is particularly acute for milk packaging. Plastic pouches remain the most practical way to deliver a product that is consumed daily and must meet the demands of affordability, hygiene and large-scale distribution. For the dairy industry, the challenge has been how to retain these benefits while reducing the environmental cost of packaging that never reaches a recycler.That dilemma has now led to a new experiment. From World Environment Day on June 5, Mother Dairy, the largest milk supplier in Delhi, will begin rolling out what it describes as India’s first milk pouch that naturally degrades in soil, starting with its cow milk variant across Delhi-NCR.“We undertook over four years of research to develop a naturally degradable milk pouch that leaves no trace of plastics in the environment. While these milk pouches will continue to remain recyclable, the key differentiator lies in their ability to degrade into natural elements, thereby helping address the challenge of fugitive plastic and contributing towards a cleaner ecosystem,” said Jayatheertha Chary, managing director, Mother Dairy.The idea, the company says, is that the pouch should function exactly like conventional packaging during storage, transport, sale and use. If it escapes the recycling chain and ends up in the environment, however, it is designed to gradually break down through microbial action in soil, returning to natural elements instead of persisting for decades.Mother Dairy unveiled the new packaging on Monday, calling it a step towards addressing plastic waste that falls outside formal collection systems. The initial rollout will cover its cow milk variant, which accounts for around 35% of the company’s daily sales in Delhi-NCR.Unlike conventional milk pouches, whose environmental fate depends entirely on collection and recycling infrastructure, the new material is intended to provide an additional end-of-life pathway. According to the company, once discarded and exposed to suitable soil conditions, the material first converts into a bioavailable wax. Naturally occurring microbes then consume this wax and break it down into natural elements over a period of a few years.Dr Meenesh Shah, chairman of the National Dairy Development Board and Mother Dairy, said, “The packaging is designed to degrade in soil within a few years rather than centuries, without any impact on consumer milk prices.”The technology was developed with a Europe-based research company. Mother Dairy said the packaging was tested at an independent NABL-accredited laboratory for biodegradability and eco-toxicity.For consumers, officials said, the shift will be virtually invisible, with no change in storage, handling, taste, quality or shelf life. Degradation begins only when discarded packaging encounters specific soil conditions and microbial activity.The initiative comes amid growing concern over plastic packaging for high-volume products. A recent report estimated that around 120 million milk pouches are sold and discarded daily in India. A 2018 waste audit by Chintan found that 57% of branded single-layer plastic waste in Delhi’s garbage consisted of milk pouches or tetra packs, underscoring how deeply milk packaging is embedded in the plastic waste stream.