Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav has highlighted the Government’s efforts to strengthen waste processing and recycling in India. Addressing the Circular Economy Conference in New Delhi, he said the legal framework for waste management had been progressively strengthened through sector-specific rules covering nine waste streams. The regulated streams include plastic waste, battery waste and electronic waste, among others. According to Yadav, the rules focus on preventing waste and promoting recycling, reuse, remanufacturing and resource recovery across the lifecycle of products. The minister said around 50,000,000 metric tonnes of waste had been processed across the regulated waste streams as on date. Under the required conversion, this represents approximately 50 mn t, reflecting the volume handled through the waste management framework. Yadav called for greater coordination between producers and recyclers in the management of plastic waste. He said closer cooperation was needed to address concerns about the availability of recyclable material and adequate recycling capacity. The minister also emphasised the need to strengthen the recovery of critical minerals from electronic waste and batteries. He sought greater participation from industry in developing markets for secondary raw materials and improving supply-chain traceability. The focus on reuse, recycling, remanufacturing and resource recovery places waste management within a broader circular economy framework. The measures discussed at the conference cover both the handling of waste after use and the development of systems that can support the recovery of materials for further use. Yadav’s remarks underline the role of producers, recyclers and other industry participants in improving the availability of recyclable material and building processing capacity. They also point to the importance of tracking materials through supply chains, particularly for waste streams containing critical minerals. The Government’s sector-specific approach applies different rules to different categories of waste while maintaining a common emphasis on prevention, recovery and recycling.