An oft-repeated saying in India is that our environmental laws are good, but their implementation is poor. I have always disagreed with this simply because the primary reason for a law’s poor implementation lies in its flawed design. Most environmental laws in India are designed using a top-down approach with an inadequate understanding of ground realities, leading to failed implementation. The recent draft guidelines published by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) on Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR) for plastic wastes is a classic example of this approach.