The import data was released even as a High Power Committee of
the Supreme Court was gearing up to submit a stock-taking report on
the status of indigenously generated and imported hazardous wastes
in the country.
The Indian Supreme Court ban was imposed after Greenpeace
exposed the imports from Germany in 1995 of waste zinc ash
containing high levels of heavy metals by Bharat Zinc Ltd, an
Indian waste recovery facility. Subsequent investigations by
Greenpeace and Indian NGOs revealed the unregulated imports of a
variety of hazardous wastes such as brass ash and used
lead-containing automobile batteries.
Currently, hazardous wastes listed by the Basel Convention are
banned for imports into India. Potentially hazardous wastes,
including ashes and residues of non-ferrous metals and alloys such
as zinc and brass, can only be imported if prior permission is
acquired and if the consignments are accompanied by analytical
results proving the consignments to be non-hazardous. PVC scrap,
which is often a significant component of copper cable scrap, is
currently restricted for imports, and will be reviewed for
inclusion as hazardous wastes under Indian law.
Wastes such as zinc ash, residues and skimmings; lead waste and
scrap; used batteries; and waste and scrap of metals such as
cadmium, chromium, cobalt, antimony, hafnium and thallium have been
exported to India from countries including OECD nations such as
Germany, USA, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, UK, Belgium and
Norway. These imports have occurred without any authorization or
the knowledge of the Indian Ministry of Environment. Some of these
waste items are also illegal under the laws of European Union
nations and Australia, both of which have banned the exports of
hazardous wastes to non-OECD countries.
Greenpeace has singled out the Indian Ministry of Environment
for its failure to take the Supreme Court ban seriously, and for
failing to stem the tide of toxic waste dumping in India. Equally
to blame are the exporters and exporting country governments which
seek to exploit the limitations in the Indian regulatory
infrastructure to export their environmental liabilities.
"The Indian Ministry of Environment's go-ahead-and-dump-on-us
attitude portrays the agency as anti-environment. Through their
inaction and attempts to dilute the Supreme Court order by seeking
entry for selected hazardous wastes, they have brought us back to
square one as far as hazardous wastes dumping in India is
concerned," said Nityanand Jayaraman, Greenpeace's Asia Toxics
Campaigner in India.
"The Ministry of Environment has shown no sincerity in obeying
the Supreme Court order, and has in many instances even sought to
obfuscate issues by attempting to free up imports of zinc ash,
toxic lead-containing wastes and hazardous ships-for-scrap. The
blame for India's status as a global dumping ground lies as much
with the Ministry as it does with the waste traders and exporters,"
Greenpeace said.
Greenpeace urges the Government of India to live up to its
obligations to the Basel Convention by ratifying the Basel Ban on
exports of hazardous wastes from industrializing countries to
industrializing nations.
"The Governments of exporting countries should make sure that
this immoral and illegal trade in hazardous wastes is stopped at
source," said Jayaraman.