World's dustbin

Although the media is focused on the health impact of asbestos on the workers who would dismantle Le Clemenceau, here is the bigger picture: India imported Rs 22.7 crore and Rs 32.8 crore worth of fabricated asbestos fibres and asbestos friction materials in 2003-04 and 2004-05, respectively. The occupational health impact of both these materials is very similar to that of the structural asbestos in Le Clemenceau. More facts: In 2004-05, France sold 109 tonnes of asbestos brake lining and pads to India, while its use is banned in industrialised countries including France.

The noise over the highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (pcbs) waste that would come out of Le Clemenceau seems like an overreaction if you compare it to the fact that in 2003-04, France exported 20 tonnes of pcbs, polybrominated biphenyls (pbbs) and polychlorinated terphenyls (pcts) to India.

The use, import and export of some of these chemicals, known as persistent organic pollutants, is banned under the Stockholm Convention. In 2003-04, India imported 5.25 tonnes of goods under the Indian trade classification number (hs number) 38249036. These cover "goods of a kind known as hazardous waste".

The database maintained by the Union ministry of commerce records with tremendous diligence the country imports large amounts of waste that is clearly hazardous. This waste -- all of it coded in official terms -- includes all sorts of substances: asbestos, mercury, cadmium, lead acid waste batteries, waste oil containing pcb s, and metal sludge containing arsenic and other heavy metals.

And our import interest isn't restricted to metal sludge; it extends to the ash of municipal waste burnt by exporting countries. In the past two years, 1,200 tonnes of incineration ash and residues have been dumped in India. The uk sent 660 tonnes and Australia contributed another 40 tonnes. It is as if India doesn't have any municipal waste disposal problems of its own. That the country imports ash from municipal and hazardous waste incinerators defies any explanation.

Import of clinical waste is recorded under code number 382530. The custom manual defines this as "clinical waste, that is contaminated waste arising from medical research, diagnoses, treatment...which often contain pathogens and pharmaceutical substances and require special disposal procedures (for example, soiled dressing, used gloves and used syringes)".

Last year, India imported 101 tonnes of this potentially dangerous waste from the super hygienic country of Singapore. And paid Rs 7 lakh for it. The cheaper the waste, the dirtier it is. In such cases, the price paid for import isn't enough to cover the cost of recycling even. This is nothing short of dumping.

Most of this waste -- import of commercial value, as the government data would have us believe -- is imported from the oecd countries that are prohibited under the Basel Convention from trading waste trade with non- oecd countries. How does this happen? What method of circumvention is this? Why does India prefer to be the dustbin of the industrialised world?

Non-rule of law
Difficult as it may be to believe, India has its own Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 1989.

That the policy makers and enforcement agencies don't consider dgft data, although it's available on a government website, in their decision making is appalling. That industrialised country governments, which have ratified the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban apart from enacting domestic laws to stop export of hazardous wastes, continue to do so is only worse. Part of the problem lies in the provision of the convention, part of it in its interpretation, and a substantial part in its enforcement.

Defining waste
To start with, the Basel Convention defines hazardous waste as "wastes that belong to any category contained in Annex I, unless they do not possess any of the characteristics contained in Annex III". Annex I contains 18 waste streams (list of processes/operations through which hazardous waste is generated; for example, wastes from the production and preparation of pharmaceutical products). It also contains 27 hazardous chemicals; if any of these is found in a waste, then it waste is to be considered hazardous.

But Basel also defines the characteristics of the hazardous waste in Annex III. So, a waste can be termed hazardous if it exhibits the following characteristics: explosive, flammable, corrosive, oxidising, poisonous, toxic, eco-toxic, among others. This means waste generated from the 18 listed streams and those containing the 27 chemicals listed hazardous can be termed as hazardous only if they exhibit the characteristics listed in Annex iii .

The fine print is that the convention has detailed universally accepted test protocols to define the hazard characteristics quantitatively. It's up to national authorities (and exporters and importers) to decide whether a waste is hazardous or not. This makes proving a waste hazardous much more difficult as compared proving a hazardous waste non-hazardous; more so in the developing countries that do not have the technical capacity in this regard.

Recognising this drawback in 1998, the Basel Convention introduced a new classification for hazardous waste in its Annex VIII. This defined waste in greater detail. But even with this, it is difficult to ascertain what waste is hazardous and what is not, because countries need to specify what are the characteristics that make the waste hazardous. This, in turn, requires test procedures.

Hazardous and invisible
The Basel Convention does not list these transactions on its website. The Indian government pleads ignorance. The individual exporting countries do not list this trade in the public domain. The answer could lie in the finest of fine print in the Basel Convention, which allows for bilateral, multilateral and regional agreements. This allows transboundry movement of hazardous wastes, even from oecd countries to their non- oecd counterparts.

If these nefarious bilateral deals do exist, the documents are not in pubic domain. It is unclear, for instance, if the uk and India have entered into a bilateral agreement allowing trade in hazardous materials. The bottomline is that India is fast becoming the waste capital of the world and all national and international agreements are doing precious little to regulate this dirty trade.