Caught clueless

The Indian government has no clue about the quantum of the hazardous waste trade -- foreign imports and domestic produce. There should be no doubt about this. The first requisite of a system to monitor hazardous or potentially hazardous waste is to inventorise the manufacturing in the country so that all the domestic hazardous waste can be tracked. Then the imports of waste can be similarly tracked to ensure that its handling is not harmful to the environment or people.

Unfortunately in India, this data does not exist. The Central Pollution Control Board, along with the state pollution control boards, has been busy preparing an inventory of hazardous waste generation. Since 1992. But according to ministry sources, less than half of the inventory has been completed in a few states. The rest have hardly begun.

As a result, the estimates of hazardous waste just don't match. In 1997, the secretary, MoEF informed the Supreme Court (SC) during the case on hazardous waste imports that the total hazardous waste generated in India was 2,000 tonnes per day: 0.7 million tonnes per annum. But a few years later, in January 2000, MoEF told the High Powered Committee (HPC) on Management of Hazardous Wastes that the total amount had increased to 9 million tonnes per annum. But the tale does not end here. In February 2000, it reported that the estimation was done to 8 million tonnes per annum. Then, three months later, in May 2000, it reported that actually the figure was only 4.4 million tonnes per annum. The point is: government doesn't know. Then or now.

Then the information about what is domestically generated and recycled is never really checked against what is imported. The Kolkata-based Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) under the Union ministry of commerce and industry collated the database for imports into the country. The import-export database of waste is sorted out commodity-wise, country-wise and year-wise.

But there are clear discrepancies between the data of MoEF and that put out by DGCIS. For instance, HPC reports that between April 1997 and March 1999, about 730,000 kg of asbestos waste was imported from Brazil, Canada, Kazakhistan, Poland, Russia, Zimbabwe and the US. But the DGCIS website shows no imports under this category of waste during those years. Import of asbestos waste was banned in 1998.

Ignorance, confusion
Hazardous waste trade is complicated. And the management of waste is even more complicated. It involves many different dealers, working surreptitiously behind different loopholes and clauses, exporting under different names and different products. For instance, in the Bhushan Steel and Stripes Ltd (BSSL) case, regulators found the exporters were routing the Iraqi war scrap through Iran, which is not classified as a war zone and therefore, not checked.

This is a standard practice in the waste trade. Therefore, the procedures need to be tough and vigilant. Then, even as the MoEF requires registration for the import and processing of toxic waste, it acknowledges that illegal trade flourishes.

But in India, things are complicated by intent (see flow chart: Rites of passage). Trade in hazardous waste is controlled by two sets of regulations -- MoEF's 1989 rules (amended in 2003) and the DGFT's export-import (EXIM) policy. Each regulation has its own definition of waste. EXIM policy, for instance, classifies hazardous waste into two categories: free and restricted. And these lists have no connection with the hazardous waste rules. The Inquiry Committee on Hazardous Wastes Lying at Ports/ ICDs/ CFSs, commonly known as A C Wadhawan committee set up also by SC, pointed out in its 2002 report that port authorities have continued to release imported consignments of zinc ash, lead scrap and waste oil, on the basis of EXIM policy, without verifying their status under the hazardous waste rules.

The differences between the two regulations lead to confusion. So, waste oil import was allowed under the EXIM policy, even if it was prohibited under the hazardous waste rules. This difference was resolved as recently as October 2003, when SC ordered that 1989 rules will supersede EXIM policy.

But can we check?
The import of waste is checked at the entry point into the country by the customs department. But as the BSSL case shows, this department is poorly staffed and ill-equipped to intercept hazardous waste. It is difficult to check. Then equipment for surveillance does not exist. For instance, most ports have to manually test consignments; such investigations can only gauge one-fourth of all the waste that pours in.

Moreover, customs laboratories do not have gadgets to detect contaminants. Take the case of waste oil. Under 2003 amendment rules, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) should be "below detection limit". In other words, if the equipment is poor, it invariably is, PCBs will never be detected.

Even when intercepted, port authorities do not know what to do with hazardous waste. The Wadhawan committee has some shocking data in its 2002 report: about 23,707 containers and drums of hazardous waste still lie at Indian ports. No agency knows how to dispose of these containers.

The Basel Convention regulates hazardous waste trade by requiring the exporting country to seek permission from the country it wants to send its waste to (see box: No teeth, yet). But it is only an informed consent convention. The real challenge lies with the importing country, which has to decide, in the interests of its own people, if it has the ability to manage, process and recycle the waste without adding to its environmental damage. This also demands that importing countries must decide what they will allow and to revise their own list of hazardous waste it will ban.

The point is that the regulation and management of hazardous substances will cost the Indian economy. It will cost money to regulate the trade. And if not regulated it will cost the health of people. The rest of the world is realising these costs and it is precisely because their cost of management of hazardous waste is increasing that they are finding cheaper options in our markets. It is clear that Indian recycling is in the small sector, which is largely unregulated and unchecked for its quality of work and waste. It makes economic sense frankly only when it remains unregulated. This is the business of the waste traders. We need to learn this fast.

Story written by Nidhi Jamwal with inputs from Vikas Parashar and Chandrabhushan. Data analysis by Clifford Polycarp and Nitin Sethi.