The textile industry has flagged concerns about an Environment Ministry move to mandate virtually all textile firms to reduce their effluent discharge to zero. The argument is that such a stipulation goes beyond what the developed world follows and would make Indian firms even more uncompetitive at a time when export orders are shrinking.
The textile industry is India’s largest employer after agriculture, accounting for 14 per cent of India’s exports, but has recently lost ground to Bangladesh and Vietnam in the global market as the preferred supplier for readymade garments.
The environment, forest and climate change ministry issued a draft notification in late November that proposes new pollution control standards for effluents from the textile industry.
“Textile units having waste water discharge greater than 25 kilo litres a day shall establish Zero Liquid Discharge — effluent treatment plant,” according to the notification. It also requires all textile units set up in clusters such as Tirupur in Tamil Nadu to set up common effluent treatment plants to ensure zero liquid discharge, irrespective of their waste water quantity.
Industry players would be granted 30 months to construct or augment their existing effluent treatment plants to comply with this new regulation under the Environment Protection Act of 1986, according to the ministry. No new or existing units will be allowed to operate their factories after that, in the absence of such arrangements.
Industry members have raised their apprehensions about the implications of the new norms in a missive sent earlier this week to the ministries of textiles as well as environment and forests, questioning the assumption that textile units discharge effluents without treating them.
“The textile industry has made substantial investments in treating effluents as per the Central Pollution Control Board’s standards… ‘zero discharge’ is not the only solution,” said A. Didar Singh, Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). “The effluent can be treated and reused for various other purposes including discharge in the sea at least in coastal states.”
Mr. Singh has urged union Environment Secretary Ashok Lavasa to consider that countries competing with India as well as the so-called developed nations haven’t set such stringent standards for the water-intensive sector.
While mooting an increase in the threshold of 25 kilo litres a day to 100 kilo litres a day, industry members have pointed out that smaller textile units wouldn’t be able to afford the costly equipment for treating effluents with a zero liquid discharge approach.
“Several units after necessary approvals from the environment ministry and state pollution boards have invested in sea-discharge after treating effluents… all these investments would stand futile with the implementation of the proposed policy, thereby increasing the financial stress on these companies and sheer wastage of national resources,” Mr. Singh wrote in a letter reviewed by The Hindu. Even textile mills in Europe and the U.S. allow discharge of waste water in the sea, river or for irrigation purposes, he said.
The industry has also requested the ministry to consider the flip side of the zero discharge proposal.
Technologies for such treatment plants is steam and electricity-intensive, leading to higher green house gas emissions as India largely relies on coal for power, they say.
The definition of zero effluent discharge should include re-use, recycling and alternative deployment of treated effluents, FICCI has suggested. The ministry has proposed a very stringent norm that allows very limited ground water extraction by units and wants the entire water recovered from the effluent treatment plants to be re-deployed in the production process.
