1. INDIA: ECO-LEGISLATION & PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY Mrs Almitra H Patel, Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management almitrapatel@rediffmail.com

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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!

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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

13. Carrybags are Banned in some hill-towns, forest areas, Sikkim State, Bangladesh. But what about bread wrappers, milk pouches and omnipresent sachets?

14. Recycling solves the problem: 8 % by weight of bitumen greatly improves tar roads.

15. 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.

16. Door-to-door garbage collection can help keep inerts out of waste

17. Recyclables go to waste- pickers & 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.

18. 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!

19. 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!

20. Thank you ! almitrapatel@rediffmail.com