The Kerala state Pollution Control Board (PCB) has declared that the dye house sludge of coir industries is a non-hazardous waste and therefore, it does not come under the purview of Hazardous Wastes (Management, Handling & Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008.
The PCB notification, issued in the wake of an earlier Supreme Court directive to some coir exporters and small scale producers to adhere to the PCB norms within a specified time limit, comes as a great relief to the industry.
The PCB declaration followed efforts made by the Coir Board to get the sledge tested in various laboratories across the country for detailed analysis over a period of four years.
The satisfactory test analysis of the laboratories prompted the PCB to clear the sledge as a non-hazardous waste, Coir Board Chairman V S Vijayaraghavan said today.
However, the sledge accumulating at the effluent treatment plants of the sludge house still required to be tested and certified as non-hazardous waste as per the norms of the PCB since the effluent treatment process also involved additional usage of chemicals, he added.
