Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Report to call for restrictions on use of plastic carrybags

By Akila Dinakar

CHENNAI Feb. 17. A draft report will be shortly submitted, calling for restrictions on plastic carrybags and a buyback system for PET bottles, with the Justice Ranganath Mishra Committee on plastics waste management having met for its final round of talks on Saturday in New Delhi.

The Central Pollution Control Board Chairman, Dilip K. Biswas, who was in Chennai last week to hold discussions with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board on evolving a protocol on application of brewery effluent for agricultural irrigation, told The Hindu that the TNPCB could undertake a calculation to assess the total pollution load from different categories of industries in the State. While giving the credit to the TNPCB for its job on the industrial pollution front, Mr. Biswas said such assessment would help in finding out whether industries were improving the efficiency of their pollution control measures.

The Chairperson, Sheela Rani Chunkath, said many industries were coming forward with environmental audit statements in which the pollution load was calculated. The work involved calculating the load for 23,000 industries inventorised by the TNPCB ``which is a massive exercise''. While in 2000-2001, the TNPCB had inventorised around 20,000 industries, in the current year, it added 3,000.

On the controversy over categorisation of plastic industry under green by the CPCB and under the hazardous red category by the TNPCB, Mr. Biswas said it was made while preparing the guidelines for streamlining the procedure for issue of consent and did not apply to pollution caused during the manufacturing process.

The CPCB issued a directive to all State Pollution Control Boards to initiate action against municipalities which did not have a proper wastewater collection system and distribution systems. The Department of Environment would expedite action on these lines, streamlining discharge of wastewater which was a major pollutant in terms of volume, he said.

The Chairman suggested the formation of an Inter-State River Pollution Committee, of which the convener will be the State PCB situated downstream of the river. For instance, if a Committee of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka was formed for tackling the pollution problem of the Cauvery river, Tamil Nadu which was downstream would be the convenor. This suggestion was put forth following complaints of pollution from several States situated on the downstream of national rivers.

An action plan should be worked out on what each State should do about pollution of rivers with periodic monitoring by the CPCB, he said.

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