Plastic waste has become a significant source of pollution in India and a government ban on some single-use items including cups and straws has come into effect.
In the world's second-most populous country, rapid economic growth has fuelled demand for goods that come with single-use plastic products, and India uses about 14 million tonnes of plastic annually.
But it lacks an organised system for managing plastic waste.
That led to nearly 13 million tonnes of plastic waste being either littered or not recycled by the South Asian nation in 2019 — the highest amount globally, according to Our World in Data.
To combat worsening pollution, 19 single-use plastic items can no longer be produced, imported, stocked, distributed or sold in India as the first phase of a longer national plan.
But will the new national ban work? Does it go far enough? And how many of the country's nearly 1.4 billion people will stick to the new rules?
What has been banned?
India's ban on some single-use plastic items includes cups, straws, cutlery, ear buds, packaging films, plastic sticks for balloons, and packaging for sweets, ice-cream, and cigarette packets, among other products, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government said in a statement.
The government has for now exempted plastic bags but it has asked manufacturers and importers to raise the thickness to promote reuse.
Thousands of other plastic products, such as bottles for drinks and bags of chips, aren't covered by the ban.
But the federal government has set targets for manufacturers to be responsible for recycling or disposing of them after their use.
India said the banned items were identified while keeping in mind the availability of alternatives: bamboo spoons, plantain trays, and wooden ice-cream sticks.
It was announced a year ago, which gave people time to prepare, Satish Sinha, associate director of Toxics Link, a New Delhi-based NGO that focuses on waste management, told the ABC.
Most plastic cannot be recycled, only downgraded, and it's often incinerated or used as fuel.
Plastics are worth three to four times as much for fuel than as scrap.
Will people follow the rules?
Some experts believe that enforcing the ban might be difficult, despite the volume of littered plastic goods that eventually choke drains, rivers and oceans and also kill animals.
Around half of India's regions have already sought to impose their own regulations, which have been successful "to varying degrees", Mr Sinha said.
In 2018, a ban on disposable plastics in New Delhi had only limited impact "because of poor enforcement," a UN report found.
This time, authorities have promised to crack down hard and while the ban is national, enforcement of the law will be up to states and city municipal bodies.
"I think that the state governments will take it seriously," Mr Sinha said.
"People across the board have been raising these issues and the state governments know that this is a problem."
Mr Sinha thinks most people will follow the new rules.
"The alternates are available, people are willing to change," he said.
"I think people by and large are quite fine with this ban."
The government has decided to set up control rooms to check any illegal use, sale and distribution of the prohibited single-use plastic products.
People found flouting the ban could face large fines and even jail time.
Does the ban go far enough?
Most of the items covered under the ban were very small and of low value, meaning they were often ignored by rag pickers and waste collectors, Mr Sinha said.
The 19 prohibited items were problematic and Mr Sinha believes ending their widespread use was a decent starting point.
"This is not going to address the issue of single-use plastic but obviously this is a good step and it gives out a message to everyone that, yes, single-use plastic is a problem," he said.
"I will personally be very happy to see that there are more items added to it."
The new ban was a "definite boost," said Satyarupa Shekhar, the Asia-Pacific coordinator of the advocacy group Break Free from Plastic.
But she also wanted it to go further.
"Given the magnitude of the plastic crisis, this is too little. And it's too little both in its scope as well as the coverage," Ms Shekhar said.
As yet, there has not been any announcement from the government about when the next phase of the ban would begin and what items it would prohibit.
Industry groups tried to stall ban
Plastic manufacturers, food, beverage and consumer goods companies had appealed to the government to delay the ban, citing inflation and potential job losses.
But India's federal Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said the ban had been in the pipeline for a year.
"Now that time is up," he said.
Firms in the plastics industry, which employs millions of people, said alternatives were expensive.
Jigish N. Doshi, president of industry group Plastindia Foundation, expects "temporary" job losses but said the bigger issue was firms "which had invested huge capital for machines that may not be useful" after the ban.
Comment has been sought from the Indian government.
ABC/Wires
