Paper improves green score

CSE says 'environmental nightmare sector' has improved performance.

The Indian paper and pulp industry had improved its environmental performance in the last five years, said the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE) in a report released today.

The Delhi-based environment watchdog's Green Rating Project has given the industry a score of 29.1 per cent in 2004, against 27.4 per cent in 1999, when it had first rated the pulp and paper industry.

The findings were released by former President KR Narayanan here today. "The good news is that even this environmental nightmare sector is showing big changes," said Chandra Bhushan, coordinator of the Green Rating Project.

Out of the 30 units evaluated by the CSE, as many as six have got a rating of three leaves, the highest being five leaves. The list is topped by ITC Ltd's Bhadrachalam unit, followed by the Hari Shankar Singhania group's JK Paper Mills and Lalit Mohan Thapar's Bilt Graphics.

JK Paper Mills had topped the 1999 rankings. Andhra Pradesh Paper Mills has slipped from the second slot in 1999 to eleventh in the current round.

Since its first rating, the CSE report said, the paper and pulp industry had cut down on its usage of water, though the average was still high. A key area of concern was the industry's high consumption of elemental chlorine to bleach paper.

Though the scenario hadn't changed significantly over the years, the industry had become more conscious of its chlorine consumption, CSE observed in its report.

The industry had become more conscious of the environment in the last five years. While only 30 per cent of the companies in the first rating had a formal environment policy, the figure rose to 89 per cent in the 2004 rating.

Between the two ratings, the number of companies with an environment department increased from 18 per cent of the total to 89 per cent and the number of companies with ISO 4001 certification was up from 3 per cent to 46 per cent. Thus, six companies got the three leaves rating in 2004 as against just three in 1999.

The biggest gains made by the industry were in the sourcing of raw material. The industry, according to the CSE, was sourcing more and more of its raw material, wood and bamboo, from farm and social forestry, besides investing in R&D to improve the productivity of plantations.

"As a result, land under the farm and social forestry programmes had doubled from 20,000 hectares in 1998 to 40,000 hectares by 2004," the report said.

Apart from social forestry, the CSE also made a case for improving the usage of waste paper as a raw material by the industry. The sector utilised only around 20 per cent of the waste paper generated in the country and depended largely on imports.

"By networking with ragpickers and kabariwallahs, the industry has the opportunity to generate wealth for the poor in the country," the report said.

On their part, senior paper industry functionaries told Business Standard that government legislation was required to segregate and collect waste paper. "Nowhere in the world is waste paper segregated and collected by the paper mills," a paper industry source said.

The paper industry has also been making a case for corporate farming in order to get better control over raw material.

"We need to have control over 40-50 per cent of our raw material before we invest in new capacity," the source said, adding: "Nobody sets up a steel mill without coal mines or a cement plant without limestone quarries."

While welcoming the green ratings, paper industry leaders said that the CSE should also study paper mills using agricultural raw material and waste paper.

"There are 20-30 such mills and their environmental problems are not being tackled," said the chief executive of a large paper company.