New Delhi: The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has made it mandatory for all industrial units in the Capital involved in generating, recycling, utilising, co-processing, pre-processing, or disposal of hazardous waste to register on the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) newly launched National Hazardous Waste Tracking System (NHWTS).
Hazardous waste includes materials that are toxic, flammable, corrosive, or reactive – usually generated by industries processing chemicals, paints, pharmaceuticals, and metals.
The new digital platform, developed by the CPCB, aims to monitor the generation, transportation, storage, recycling, and disposal of hazardous waste across the country in real-time, officials said.
“All the authorised industries involved in generation, recycling, utilisation, co-processing, pre-processing and/or disposal of hazardous waste should get registered on the portal mandatorily so that hazardous waste generated can be tracked for proper disposal through registered operators and at the designated site only..” the DPCC notice issued on Sunday mentioned.
A DPCC official said the NHWTS will serve as a single application for tracking the movement of hazardous waste and aims to resolve the issues pertaining to inter-state movement of hazardous wastes. A module for registration can meanwhile be accessed via https://geo.nic.in/nhwts/ or through the CPCB’s e-governance portal, the notice added.
As per CPCB’s report “National Inventory on Generation and Management of Hazardous and Other Wastes (2023-24)” – lack of publicly available data is a key problem in terms of handling hazardous waste. As per the report, Delhi had around 2,888 hazardous waste generating units, of which only 1,235 (42.76%) had submitted their annual returns for the year 2023-24.
“There is no recycling and HW utilising facility available in Delhi, however, HW is being sent to other states for recycling. One common integrated TSDF (treatment, storage, and disposal facility) is operating in Delhi and about 22,341 MT (metric tonnes) and 354 MT of HW has been disposed at the sanitary landfill site (SLF) and incinerated during the year respectively. The gap observed in the generation and management of HW has been communicated to the pollution control board..” the report had said.