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The dangers of hazardous waste
By Dr. Veena Kalra
Published in toxicslink.org, 01/08/2004
Hazardous Waste can take on many forms. It may be liquid, solid or gas and all have one thing in common, they are dangerous and can pose a substantial hazard to human health and environment when not managed properly.
India, ranked as the world's eighth largest economy and tenth most industrialised nation, has witnessed a major rise in industrial output and consequent rise in toxic and hazardous releases and waste.
Presence of various chemicals in these waste makes them toxic, poisonous, corrosive, flammable, explosive and infectious in nature and also these waste are not subject to natural biodegradation process.
In India, generation of hazardous waste is to the tune of 6-7 million tonnes per year, although the figures may vary, as at present there is no reliable data available, on the nature and quantity of hazardous waste generated in India.
The major hazardous waste generation fleet in India is petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, paints, dyes, fertilisers, chlor-alkali, and other different industries. The production /manufacturing of these products results in generation of hazardous waste. On becoming obsolete, these products in turn generally become hazardous waste.
The lack of a preventative approach to waste management has led to generation of more and more hazardous wastes and sadly, controlling hazardous waste has become a serious problem in India and no special care is taken in their management. Government, Industries, Municipalities, all are unable to tackle such hazardous wastes. Consequently, the hazardous waste problem is taken a monstrous shape.
The main laws dealing with the hazardous waste in the country are unable to tackle the alarming situation of hazardous waste in the country because of the negligence shown on the part of officials of the government, and lack of concern on the part of industry.
Despite the ban on import of hazardous waste in the country, implementation of the ban on the ground is very negligent and hazardous waste is coming to our shores in a regular phenomenon. Apart from generating their own hazardous wastes, India invites import of such waste in the name of reuse and recycling, though there is lack of environment friendly technology to reuse and recycle hazardous waste.
There should be environmental friendly hazardous waste management in the country and it needs participation of all stakeholders that includes government agencies, private sectors and civil society. NGOs as a part of civil society along with media, should play their role as investigators and publicisers, as well as make the public aware of the issues with crucial information sharing and clearing role and try to convince the government with policy advocacy. Everyone must act responsibly to prevent further pollution of the environment.
Thus, indiscriminate generation, improper handling, storage and disposal of hazardous waste are the main factors contributing to the environmental and human health impact. The pressing need is to rethink the present approach of pollution control and end-of-the-pipe approaches and focus on pollution prevention, waste minimisation, cleaner production, and toxics' use reduction.
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EXISTING VIEWS
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manoj oza |
18/03/2010 |
year after year, environment related experts, magazines, seminars and media keep on shouting about pollution from plastics. yet production, consumption, disposal of such material ries on phenomenal levels. What is national policy on such wastes? Has any one ever given clear cut policy for its disposal or management ? One option of incineration is increasingly offered on western models and enviornmentalist cry foul. But they do not have any tangible, workable solution to offer. The regulator clone international standards which make it impossible for any one to introduce intermediate stage technologies and check its effectivenss. Only choice left is to opt for incineratioon couple with extreme costs to meet international standards, often only at the stage of clearance.
Such illogical apporach benefit only vendors, selet few fixers and rest of country throw out problem into environment. It is high time that our focus is shifted to local reality based solutions which will certainly graduate into better options. Else we will have all statistics, seminar expertise and feel great about warning the world of our wisdom. It is time to work on giving tangible, practical solutions and not keep on crying about problem while size of problem keep on galloping up. The technology has to be locally viable and not in form of xerox of european or US idea. The it can be made as part of policy for all plastic waste generators as an integral part of activity. |
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