Just dump it

Just dump it

September 30, 2004. Eleven trucks carrying imported metal scrap trundled into Sahibabad-based Bhushan Steels and Stripes Limited (BSSL), a steel smelting and rolling unit. One of them exploded, killing 10 workers -- the scrap the truck was carrying had live ammunition mixed in it.

Then, over the next fortnight, live and used artillery shells, cartridges and spent rockets began to pop up all around the country -- at a community park in Ghaziabad; inside a container in Kandla port, Gujarat; in fields and roadsides (see box: Shell shock). Newsreports -- unconfirmed -- sombrely pointed to the presence of antitank shells and air-to-air missiles. Government -- tightlipped -- launched an investigation.

Following the BSSL explosion, army bomb disposal squads were sent combing depots, ports, containers and the countryside. BSSL's explosive load had been released by the Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Tughlakabad, near Delhi; ICD battened down, refusing to clear any of the 3,000 metal scrap containers lying there. The official investigation sought answers to where the waste had come from, how it could make its way to BSSL. It took two directions. One put the pieces of the shell-shocking puzzle together. The other remains puzzled, and in pieces.

Direction I: puzzle solved
On September 19, 106.5 tonnes of scrap metal reached ICD, Tughlakabad. The bill of entry for the containers showed Iran as the country of origin. They were allowed to go through. Post-BSSL blow-up, when it transpired that shells had Iraqi marks on them, confusion reigned. "Our guess was that these shells might have been smuggled from Iraq to Iran, and then, via a Dubai-based dealer, sent to India," says Sahab Singh, customs commissioner, ICD Tughlakabad, New Delhi (see interview: Ill-equipped, under-staffed).

It took government two weeks to trace the real source. On October 13, 2004 the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) announced the waste was indeed from Iraq. "The scrap originated in Iraq but was sent by road to Iran, from where it was shipped to India," informs Ajay Srivastava, joint director, DGFT. It was shipped from Bandar Abbas port, Iran. Dubai-based Lucky Metals shipped it, in turn, to India. "The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines was the company that shipped the consignment, by a ship called Kuolong, to Mundra port in Gujarat," informs A K Jyotishi, additional commissioner customs,ICD Tughlakabad. "At ICD, a team comprising an inspector and a superintendent checked the consignment and gave out-of-charge to it," he accepts.

Direction II: puzzled and in pieces
While these facts emerged, the government sublimated into a state of immense perplexity. Was the scrap that had reached BSSL non-hazardous or hazardous? The import of hazardous waste is covered under the Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989, amended in 2003. Under it iron and steel scrap are categorised as waste, which is allowed to be imported without any licence or restriction. However, rule 3 (14) offers a definition: "Hazardous waste means any waste which by reason of any of its physical, chemical, reactive, toxic, flammable, explosive or corrosive characteristics causes danger...". Therefore, even if the steel waste is not technically restricted under the hazardous waste rules, by the very nature of its flammable and other characteristics it is clearly hazardous. But grappling with this quandary, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MOEF, custodian of these rules) sank into an official silence it hasn't emerged from, to date. On being contacted, N H Hosabettu, director, hazardous substances management division, MOEF, said the BSSL consignment could not be termed hazardous. As explosives were present in it, he told Down To Earth, the matter concerned the Union ministry of home affairs.

Elsewhere, DGFT and the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) went hammer and tongs at each other. DGFT is affiliated to the Union ministry of commerce and industry, and frames export-import (EXIM) policy. CBEC is affiliated to the Union ministry of finance, and implements what DGFT decides. Stunned by BSSL, DGFT took recourse to meetings. On October 9, it issued a notification asking customs to check all the metal scrap coming to India. But CBEC refused the proposal: customs didn't possess the infrastructure, CBEC said, to regulate non-shredded metals. On October 15, Union minister of commerce and industry Kamal Nath stepped in.

He organised an inter-ministerial meeting to review the export-import policy for metallic scrap. Nath then announced all metal scrap coming to India would have to carry a pre-shipment inspection certificate. Such imports would be allowed only from 14 major ports. Finally, on October 18 CBEC issued a circular specifying the procedures for metal scrap. For the first time, it has differentiated between shredded and unshredded scrap and held the import of unshredded scrap will be allowed from only 15 notified ports, while shredded scrap can come through the other 30-40 minor ports also.

It has also tightened the importer's responsibility by making the pre-shipment inspection certificate mandatory for all metal scrap import. Earlier, it was mandatory only for a consignment from a war-torn country. Also, the shipping company, that is carrying the loose metal scrap, has to ensure that every consignment is accompanied by a pre-shipment inspection certificate before it is loaded. But will this be enough?

Shells in scrap
The government is treating BSSL as a one-off incident. But as a customs official says, "The first such case came to light in 1991, when ICD was located at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. That time, too, a consignment had come from Iraq. But it did not make news because the quantity of explosives in it was minimal. In 1994, there was a blast at ICD due to explosives hidden in waste, which killed five people." What did government do? It shifted ICD to Tughlakabad.

The experiences of metal scrap recyclers also point to a horrendous regulatory record. Narrates a north Delhi-based steel recycler, who -- like BSSL -- imports metal scrap: "In 1994, a pistol was found in the metal scrap consignment I had imported. I was booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act and spent three months behind bars." Most of the scrap comes from war-torn countries, he adds, simply because it is the cheapest in the world.

There is another facet to this dirty trade. DGFT has a separate category for empty or discharged cartridges of all bores and sizes. In other words, it legally allows the import of "dead" ammunition. In 2002-2003 alone, we imported 6,751 tonnes of this explosive scrap. Strikingly, we are getting most of it from Ivory Coast -- clearly a war zone. The government will of course argue that this scrap has been checked and cleared. But is the system rigorous enough to be able to detect a "live" shell in a consignment of dead ammunition?

Shells? In scrap?
An impression government has fostered is that the shells got "accidentally" mixed with the metal scrap. But recyclers claim the exact opposite: shells are added because they are in demand. "As other countries do not want to touch scrap from war-torn countries, it is much cheaper: a tonne costs US $220-230, about Rs 10.50 per kg. As against this, the same steel scrap from the US would cost about US $280. "The average cost of the metal scrap from a war-torn country becomes much lower because apart from steel, this waste contains valuable metals like brass, copper, manganese and nickel," says a Delhi-based recycler who also imports metal scrap. In Delhi, the cost of nickel and copper is Rs 800 per kg and Rs 184 per kg respectively. Brass and manganese are sold at Rs100 per kg.

Recyclers claim metal scrap is imported into India due to shortage. Consider steel scrap. India imports nearly 2.5 million tonnes of steel scrap annually. The problem is that there is a growing gap in production and consumption of steel. India's per capita steel consumption is about 30 kg, as compared to 200 kg in China and 350 kg in Europe. But the boom in the construction sector and the car market has heated up demand. Domestic manufacturing is not keeping pace and steel scrap from other countries has filled this gap. Ironically, just days before the shell burst in Ghaziabad, in August, the government removed the five per cent import duty on steel scrap. Going by rough estimates, there are close to 2,000 factories -- furnaces, rolling mills and re-rolling mills -- that operate across the country to segregate, smelter and recover steel. Like BSSL.

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Import happy

Waste can be broadly classified as hazardous and non-hazardous. Globally, the trade in hazardous waste is governed through the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. In India, hazardous wastes are regulated under the Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989, further amended in 2003. These rules define hazardous waste as "any waste which by reason of any of its physical, chemical, reactive, toxic, inflammable, explosive or corrosive characteristics causes danger or is likely to cause danger to health or environment, whether alone or when in contact with other wastes or substances."

The 2003 amendment rules further categorises hazardous waste under various schedules. Column 3 of Schedule-I, for instance, lists hazardous waste generated during some processes. Schedule 2 lists hazardous waste based on their concentration limits. Schedule 3 lists wastes applicable for import and export.Under this schedule, there are certain wastes, like lead waste, waste oil, non-ferrous metal wastes, which can be handled only by registered re-processors and recyclers. The recyclers have to be registered with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), which is supposed to monitor these units. Schedule 8 of the rules lists 29 categories of hazardous wastes, which are prohibited for import and export under all circumstances.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) is the agency under the Union ministry of commerce and industry, which issues licenses for all imports, including scrap. The ministry website makes for fascinating reading as it shows that India is literally becoming the biggest centre of dirty trade in the world. We get waste from 105 countries, including some of the poorest in Africa. We also get almost all kinds of scrap -- from steel to incineration ash, to pig hair. This waste trade is growing big time. The problem is that it remains more or less unregulated in the country. It creates pollution. It is a health hazard. It adds to the damage we are creating with our own consumption and waste. We can't manage our own waste and we are importing more and more from the rest of the world. It is time we asked, with this trade growing exponentially, what will happen to the trashcan called India?

What is the trade worth?
Down To Earth analysed the import data presented on the Union ministry of commerce and industry website to get a picture of the trade. We looked for all categories and sub categories that listed waste and scrap. We found the list went on and on. We then started digging for the big imports of scrap and tracked their source. We put together data for iron and steel scrap, other metal, heavy metals, plastic and other toxic type waste. The total imports of just these select waste items -- roughly 43 -- increased from 1.92 million tonnes in 1997 to 2.72 million tonnes by 2002-2003. In these six years, the country had received 14.05 million tonnes of this waste.

Lets look at: iron and steel scrap
It has grown from 1.64 million tonnes in 1997-1998 to 2.39 million tonnes in 2002-2003, a compounded growth rate of over 45 per cent (see graph: Steel's the show). We get just about everybody's waste. But when we looked at the category called 'other steel and iron waste scrap', we found that the UK sent us the biggest gift. It exported 2.1 million tonnes in the last four years, roughly 34 per cent of the total waste we received in this category. The notorious Bhushan Steel and Stripes Ltd consignment, which blew up in our face, came under this same category.

Take plastic waste and scrap
As if we don't have our own problems of dealing with plastic waste, we added to it by importing as much as 79,000 tonnes just in 2002-2003. It is also galloping -- growing at a compounded annual rate of 62 per cent between 1997 and 2003 (see graph: Pull of plastic).

We don't care much about what we import. Between 1997 and 2003, India brought in 6,847 tonnes of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) scrap. The imports increased by more than 700 per cent over this period. Not surprisingly, the US was the major exporter, followed by Belgium. Nobody knows where this waste ended up as there are no restrictions or regulations on the import of PVC scrap in the country. This when we can't dispose of our own PVC waste is indeed ironical. PVC when burnt releases deadly dioxins and so is a constant nuisance. But then, who cares. We are making money. This is economic growth.

Or take heavy metal scrap
Heavy metal scrap falls into different types of regulation. Importers of lead, zinc and nickel scrap need to be registered with CPCB, while tin and cadmium waste is not part of the restricted list and can be imported with a license from DGFT. Only chromium waste is on the banned list under the hazardous waste rules.

The big increase in the CPCB registered items is lead scrap. Increasing from 16,345 tonnes to 31,282 tonnes. But zinc scrap has come down, from 41,000 tonnes to 31,598 tonnes in the same period. The same is the case with nickel (see graph: Up and down).



Tin scrap -- small quantities -- has gone up from 26 tonnes to 108 tonnes. Cadmium imports have gone down and chromium has stopped since 1999-2000, when the 2000 amendment to the Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules came into force.

Are we getting what is banned?
An answer to this is difficult simply because it will depend on the capacities of the customs to check and monitor the waste trade. There are cases when illegal waste has been detected in consignments. But there is a bigger issue escaping notice: we import large amounts of hazardous substances, if not their waste.

For instance, we import arsenic (see graph: Toxic rise).

We import selenium and thallium. We also import unimaginable amounts of mercury. The waste of all these is banned for import or export. The moot question is: how do we know we aren't importing waste and only the substance? Can we really manage these hazardous substances, which the rest of the world is rejecting?

Whose waste?
Everybody's. We import from the rich countries; recycling costs are high there. So, from the US to Japan to European countries, all send us their waste. But we also import from several poorer countries. Sudan, for instance, provides lead scrap. The steel scrap we import is sourced from Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali and several other African countries. The biggest exporters of lead scrap to India are Australia and the US. Exporters of cartridges of other alloy steel of all bores and sizes (ammunition) include several conflict zones, like Kuwait, which borders Iraq (see table: Explosive).
 

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Slow, but sure, poisons

Mercury:Dubious Distinction
India has decided to play with the tools of the devil. It wants to import huge amounts of mercury, which the rest of the world is quickly phasing out (as it is highly toxic and dangerous). But why should this deter us?

The import of mercury waste and mercury waste compounds as constituents or contaminants is completely banned under the hazardous waste rules. But the problem is that even as we ban waste imports, we import huge amounts of mercury compounds. Mercury is a hazardous substance. But more importantly mercury is recyclable.

Therefore, it is impossible to say what we have imported as mercury is recycled waste or a virgin mineral. For instance, as huge industrial units based on mercury are being phased out in Europe and the US, these countries do not know what to do with their mercury. Spain is the key miner for the world and what is now being discussed is how the recycled waste of these phasing out countries can be sold on the world market as a primary mineral.

The world phases out. We phase in
Mercury is one of the most toxic heavy metals and has several documented, serious impacts on human health. The metal and its compounds are especially harmful to the developing nervous system of children. Methylmercury, a common compound, readily breaches the placental barrier and the blood-brain barrier. It is severely neurotoxic, and impairs the developing brain.

Mercury is being phased-out across the industrialised world. But not in India. We are ushering it in. India's mercury imports have more than doubled in the past seven years -- from 254 tonnes in 1996-97 to 531 tonnes in 2002-2003. This has given India the dubious distinction of being the largest mercury consumer in the world (see table: Heavy metal load). Mercury serves as raw material for various industrial sectors. A common application is in mercury cell-based chlor-alkali plants. It is also used in pesticides, batteries, electrical and electronic gadgets, thermometers, dental amalgam fillings and paints.
 

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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.