Transcript INDIA: ECO-LEGISLATION & PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY

INDIA:
ECO-LEGISLATION &
PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY
Mrs Almitra H Patel,
Member, Supreme Court Committee
for Solid Waste Management
[email protected]
India has a 3000-year-old
sustainable-ecology culture
This has been eroded in the last 100 years.
We are writing new laws to restore it:
1972 Wildlife Protection Act
1974 “Water Act” to control pollution
1981 “Air Act” ditto
1986 Environment Protection
Act is the most powerful.
It allows the making of Rules on a wide
range of topics without needing
Parliament approval.
It also can delegate powers under these
Rules to individual States.
But our Pollution Control Boards have
no “teeth” unlike EPA in USA
1984: Union Carbide’s MIC gas
leak tragedy at Bhopal led to:
1989 Five Rules for Hazardous Waste
1991 Public Liability Insurance Act
1998 Biomedical Waste (Management &
Handling) Rules
1991 Fly Ash Notification, amended 2003
(compulsory use within 50 & now 100 km)
Public Interest Litigation led to:
1999 Supreme Court Committee Report
on Solid Waste Mgt in Class 1 Cities in
India,
which was a blueprint for
2000 Municipal Solid Waste
(Management & Handling Rules) : daily
doorstep collection of ‘wet’ waste for
composting. ‘Dry’ recyclables to
informal sector (waste-pickers, traders)
First Producer-Take-Back
responsibility :
2001 Lead-Acid Batteries (Management
and Handling) Rules :
Requires manufacturers, importers,
assemblers, reconditioners, dealers to
set up collection centers, file half-yearly
returns on take-back, and register
themselves with Pollution Control Boards
Poor enforcement and
monitoring of Batteries Rules
Only 8% goes as Original EQuipment.
92% is grey market, cash transactions
without bills, and part-wise repairs.
Lead-battery imports are banned under
Basel Convention but still sneak in for
clandestine recycling in v poor conditions.
USA failure to ratify Basel Convention
(along with only Haiti and Afghanistan) is
not helping receiving countries like ours!
Much more take-back
legislation is expected,
mostly PIL-driven through
the Supreme Court of India
A High-Power Committee has already
recommended this for PET bottles but
compliance is lagging despite industry
promises of self-regulation.
Clamour for e-waste take-back is growing.
PET bottles cause huge
environmental problems:
Un-recycled bottles lie around, choking drains
& sewers , hence flooding of low-lying slums.
Upto 30% empty bottles are ‘re-used’ for filling
with spurious soft drinks each summer.
A “Pesticides in Coke and Pepsi” scandal has
just rocked the industry, causing huge losses,
yet they still resist voluntary take-back schemes.
Compulsion may follow.
New Water Standards are being formulated.
Track the story in
www.cseindia.org
Small precedents
bring large changes
A Coke plant was over-drawing ground-water, aquifer
levels fell, farmers and villagers suffered. Also surface
water pollution. Enviro groups took up the cause.
The village refused to renew Coke’s plant licence.
The Kerala High Court upheld this.
The Kerala Govt has ordered them not to draw
any ground-water till the rains come.
Parliament wants Coke, Pepsi and others to now
pay for ground-water drawn for commercial use.
Urban Waste is enormous :
India’s population is over 1.06 billion.
One more is added every second.
28% = 300 million live in cities and towns:
35 metros of over 10 million population
400 Class 1 Cities with over 100,000 pop.
4000 more with over 20,000 population.
65% urban dwellers live in 10% of these towns
Farmers used city wastes till
1960s for on-farm composting.
Now compost plants are needed
to remove thin plastics : only 7%
by weight but 50% by volume
Carrybags are Banned in some hill-towns,
forest areas, Sikkim State, Bangladesh.
But what about bread wrappers, milk
pouches and omnipresent sachets?
Recycling solves the problem:
8 % by weight of bitumen
greatly improves tar roads.
Inerts are also a huge problem:
Road dust, drain silt, odd debris makes up
40% of the waste transported out of town.
This makes biomethanation or incineration
totally unviable in South Asia, though foreign
firms aggressively pursue this for subsidies.
Only composting can handle such
high inerts, but compost quality suffers.
Compost standards are being laid down.
Door-to-door garbage collection
can help keep inerts out of waste
Recyclables go to wastepickers & waste traders
They form 0.5 -1% of a big city’s population
and are now recognised and legitimised :
MSW Rules ask cities to
“promote recycling or reuse
of segregated materials”.
A great opportunity for suppliers
of all types of simple, low-cost
recycling processes & equipment.
India as world’s recycler?
Pros, Cons, a Win-Win option
We have no laws yet to prevent dumping of
imported non-hazardous waste from the West.
So collecting our own waste is now unviable.
We are excellent at recycling everything.
We don’t need costly automated eqpt.
Send us clean technology concepts,
process know-how, specs, blueprints.
Our innovative fabrication will benefit you!
Help us frame good laws for
packaging and take-backs
Worldwide, social responsibility
is only awakened by legislation.
India must begin to promote waste
minimisation, toxics-free production,
product stewardship, producer
responsibility till end of life-cycle.
Please lead by example, behaving in
India as your industry does at home!
Thank you !
[email protected]