The second rating of the pulp and paper sector by the Green Rating Project shows visible improvements in environmental performance of a sector known as an environmentalists nightmare

by Chandra Bhushan, Monali Zeya Hazra, Radhika Krishnan, Nivit Kumar Yadav and Ramya Vishwanathan

The Green Rating Project (GRP) of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) was conceived as a means to track the environmental performance of India’s key industrial sectors. In 1999, it rated the pulp and paper sector. In 2001 it rated the powerful automobile sector. In 2002 it grappled with the performance of the chlor-alkali sector. Now it has revisited the sector to find that the change it has been driving for is occurring.

The sector’s overall performance is 29.1 per cent and has been awarded the two leaves awards for a more environmentally considerate life cycle: from sourcing raw material, through product processing to how it disposes effluents off. In 1999, the sector’s average was 27.4 per cent.

GRP’s tighter criteria apart, if the earlier rating is used the sector’s performance improves by 10-15 per cent. ITC Ltd-Bhadrachalam Unit tops this time with a score of 47 per cent, having invested Rs 500 crores in a wide ranging modernization programme including a shift to elemental chlorine free (ECF) technology. It is the first mill in India to have phased out the use of highly polluting elemental chlorine. This technology leapfrog has resulted in a drop in organochlorine emissions from 2.6 kg/tonne of bleached pulp in 1998 to as low as 0.3 kg/tonne by the end of 2002. By installing a lime kiln for re-burning lime sludge, it has moved towards closing its material cycle.

In terms of raw material it is currently meeting 80 per cent of its wood and bamboo requirements from farm and social forestry, sourced from farmers. However the plant loses out on water management. Even though it has reduced the water usage from 139 tonnes of water for each tonne of paper produced in 1998 to 82 tonnes in 2002, it is way behind the global best benchmark of 17 tonnes of water for each tonne of product produced, for a plant like this one.

With a score of 45.3 per cent, JK Paper Mills holds the second position. In 1999 it was the most modern paper mill in the country and the only one to have ISO 14001 or environmental management certification. But it failed to capitalize on its standing. It did not invest in improving its process technology and therefore, did not do much to prevent pollution.

But what it did was to stabilize its process technology and reduce its water, chemical and energy consumption substantially. It is still the least energy consuming pulp mill. It is also the least elemental chlorine consuming kraft mill: consumption being 35 kg/tonne of paper produced, which is 30 per cent lower than the Indian average of 52 kg/tonne. It has also brought down its water consumption from 150 tonnes of water for each tonne of paper to less than 90 tonnes.

Just a notch below is the Ballarpur Industries Ltd (BILT) Graphic Papers holding the third position with 45.2 per cent. In 1999, owned by the Indonesian giant Asian Pulp and Paper, it faced community opposition due to its water consumption. It is now owned by the BILT group and its wastewater with a Biological Oxygen load of 0.12 kg/tonne of product is used by the community for irrigation. But this mill being a non-integrated paper mill – one that buys pulp from the market – should be a closed water loop plant, one that doesn’t discharge any effluent.

However there have been some big losers too. The Andhra Pradesh Paper Mills Limited (APPML) was at the second position in the last rating; it has slipped to the eleventh position. It has lost big time by not investing in its process, not improving efficiencies. But the most serious issue is its water consumption at 200 tonnes per tonne of paper; more than five times the best practice.

The other big loser is the Ballarpur unit of Ballarpur Industries Limited (BILT), slipping from the third position last time to the 13^th position. This is again due to lack of technological growth. It has no lime kiln and continues to generate and dispose lime sludge on land. The mill depends on the highly stressed Wardha river and has a tremendous effect on it and on the local communities dependent on the river water due to its coloured effluent.

Overall analysis shows that while the sector made strides in improving its raw material sourcing pattern, its corporate environmental management systems and its relations with local communities, it also lost in key areas like process efficiency and management.

The sector has made significant improvement in the enunciation and enforcement of corporate environment policy and management systems. During the first rating only 30 per cent of the mills had formal environment policy, which increased to 89 per cent during the second rating.

In this rating companies have also shown an improvement in terms of sourcing their raw material, as more and more of it comes from farm and social forestry. As a result the land under farm and social forestry has increased from 20,000 hectares (ha) in 1998 to 40,000 ha in 2002. There are mills that source 80-90 per cent of their raw material from farmers encouraging them to grow good quality trees – like Harihar polyfibres gets 93 per cent of its wood from farmers.

The industry should pursue a strategy of moving towards farmer grown wood from community and joint forest management areas; a grand alliance with farmers. There is also a huge potential in terms of wastepaper as raw material for paper. However Indian wastepaper largely does not find its way back to the mills. In 2002 roughly 20 per cent of the total paper and paperboard consumed made it back to raw material for paper. The industry also needs a grand alliance with the kabariwallah to source the wastepaper.

But the industry is still notorious in its misuse of water. Even though the average use of water has been reduced to 135 tonnes per tonne of paper from an average of 200 tonnes in 1999. But it still remains far higher than the global best practices.

Linked to it is the industry’s high consumption of elemental chlorine to bleach its paper. This leads to high loads of organochlorines, collectively known as ‘adsorbable organic halides’ or AOX, in the wastewater. Globally the industry has moved on to elemental chlorine free (ECF) or total chlorine free (TCF) technology. In India, only ITC Bhadrachalam has the ECF technology.

Using elemental chlorine is the cheapest way to bleach pulp but it also consumes 5-10 times more water than the ECF or TCF technology. This also produces higher amounts of wastewater loaded with AOX. Hence the industry must go for a water-tech trade off wherein as the process becomes cleaner, it becomes more water efficient.

In terms of waste discharge whatever standards the mills meet are not good enough to protect the environment thanks to the weak and meaningless regulations. The AOX released during the process using elemental chlorine, needs to be strictly regulated as organochlorines are toxic and do not break down. But in India the AOX standard is 2 kg per tonne of product, 3-25 times higher than the global best. AOX released as part of the bleaching process, should be monitored in terms of bleached paper produced.

Worse in Indian mills, AOX is measured in treated effluent. Whereas it is well known that AOX gets transferred and removed in the sludge of the effluent treatment plant. But Indian regulators do not measure AOX in the untreated effluent.

Further the discharge of coloured wastewater is a major cause of conflict between local communities and paper mills. But as yet there is no regulation for colour at a central level, which would provide the impulse for proper technology choices. Only the Andhra Pradesh state pollution board has set a standard for colour discharge.

Most companies prefer to dispose off their effluents on land that is for irrigation, because the standards for disposal on land are much lower than standards for disposal in rivers. But since most companies use elemental chlorine for bleaching, neither the companies not the government consider the effect of organochlorines on the quality of agricultural produce.

However, it is their immediate neighbours, that the companies impact the most. Located in areas where there is abundance of water and raw material, they are invariably in conflict with the communities sharing these resources. That the points of discharge are located downstream the point of withdrawal is a major irritant for the communities. The large amounts of solid waste in mounds of lime sludge add to the grouse of the local residents. Not to mention the rotten egg like smell that emanates from kraft mills.

But even here there is a noticeable change between the two rating periods. GRP received less criticism from local communities about the mills in the 2004 ratings. The efforts by some mills to deal with their pollution loads have been reflected in the perception of the community.

This change for the better is good news. The comparison of the 1999 and 2004 ratings shows that this unenvironmental juggernaut is beginning to amend its ways. But even more exciting is the possibility of future, greater news. For this, its leaders will have to bite the bullet, as the saying goes, to really show how an industry can be the true growth sector.

Unhealthy buildings

Buildings can cause sickness, but building biology helps remove harmful electromagnetic fields form architecture

by Mona Doctor-Pingel, architect, Auroville

Various types of allergies, bronchial asthma, diabetes, obesity, chronic fatigue syndrome, cancer, AIDS and tuberculosis have become almost endemic to our civilisation. Is it possible that building designs – along with modern living standards and habits – have something to do with the state of our mental and physical health?

Recently, when their one and a half year old son suffered diarrhoea for long, with the medicine offering little succour, a young Berlin couple consulted an architect, specialising in building biology. Inspection revealed a strong electric field in the child’s room. The field remained even after the house’s electric supply was switched off.

The reason: aluminium strips of thermal insulation under the roof, which attracted electrical fields from the neighbour’s circuits and then conducted them further. The biologist recommended connecting all the aluminium strips and earthing them at one point. After two weeks the parents reported that their son’s diarrhoea was gone.

Marcus, a thirteen year old fashionable boy, was a chronic bed wetter till three years back. He also had various allergies, since he was five. When therapies and weekly sessions didn’t help, the parents decided to change the flooring of the room, use natural paints and wallpapers, took care that no electric appliances were near the child’s bed and removed all synthetic curtains.

However the problem lay in the faulty electric installations running in the wall next to Marcus’s bed. Using a "net- free" switch, which shuts off the electric network when not in use, gave immediate results. Marcus’s bedwetting was gone and allergies reduced considerably.

Problems and solutions like these are going to become increasingly common in the context of a fast growing, urban and ‘developed’ India with its hi-tech, electronic accoutrements.

That invisible electromagnetic fields (EMF) exist has been known for over 150 years. Generally enough precautions are taken to shield expensive equipment in hospitals, information technology manufacturing units and airplanes against external electromagnetic interference.

There have been many studies to indicate possible health effects of EMF exposure. Some of these analyses demonstrate effects of cellular phones, towers, cordless phones, wireless networks, radio and TV transmission towers on the human body. The World Health Organisation (WHO), based on epidemiological studies, has recently classified extremely low frequency magnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans

In spite of all these, we rarely take care to safeguard the human body against EMFs. Even though we spend more than 80 per cent of our lives inside buildings, very little care is taken to ensure that functioning of the human body – which is carried out by minute electrical impulses – in not disturbed by external interferences.

Houses at the most use energy efficient technologies, rainwater harvesting techniques, wastewater recycling and traditional construction technique. These are necessary components of good house design but are insufficient to take care of modern day problems in a holistic sense.

A society’s consciousness has always manifested itself in architecture. Today, we need to ask ourselves if the "progressive" elements that permeate our dwellings are really necessities or they are just status symbols? We require a paradigm shift in architecture. This is where building biology comes in.

Building biology – which can be seen as the modern form of the Indian architectural system, Vastushastra – originated in post war Germany. It was born out of a widespread disenchantment there over building forms, which overused electricity and disregarded the environment and natural laws. The concept aims at creating harmonious relationships between living beings, the environment and building form through construction of healthy homes and workplaces.

A superficial examination of building biology might leave one with the impression that it is just a study of non toxic building materials, clean indoor air and shielded electric installations. This is just a small part of the picture; there are other important aspects to building biology. It also encompasses subjects such as ecology, biology, medicine, engineering, education and economy. This interdisciplinary approach helps building biology in finding the right synthesis between humankind, nature and economy.

Among the key elements of building biology is electrobiology; it deals with electricity, artificially created EMFs and their effects on our biological system. The increasing use of electrical appliances in our daily lives, the rising numbers of high-rise and high-density buildings and the rapid growth of transmission antennas – leading to wireless homes and offices where everything is done digitally at the tip of a button – mean that today we are much more vulnerable to harmful electric fields than in the past. The gross overuse of synthetic materials and reinforced concrete along with improper earthing of electric wires only increases our precariousness vis-à-vis EMFs.

It is here that electrobiology helps locate harmful electrical fields that cannot be tracked down by our sense organs. Consulting an electrobiologist before planning buildings can help us keep EMFs effects to a bare minimum.

Besides, conscious and conservative use of energy are among the first few steps we could implement. Awareness and right choices are key. It does not mean creating fear or limiting comforts, but finding the right dose of comforts, like everything else in life.

Ultimately, we need to remember that the human body is a complex and sensitive mechanism. Many factors can make it sick: bad nutrition, too little movement, wrong medicines, bad habits and long term exposure to EMFs. It always depends on how full your glass is – any of these factors can be the last drop to make it overflow.

So there is an urgent need to design and build healthy and energy conserving homes. In other words, we must have buildings that do not make us sick but are healing places for the body, mind and spirit. Building biology helps achieve that.

China, the master recycler?

The UK exports more than a third of its waste paper and plastic to China for recycling: government puts the annual figure at 200,000 tonnes of plastic rubbish and 500,000 tonnes of paper and cardboard. Environmentalists suspect this is done without assessing the environmental cost involved. They fear the waste landing up in China is not handled safely and could cause large-scale pollution. "China is buying up everything …It doesn’t care about contamination," says a British plastics recycler. The UK plastic industry has been hit hard, as domestic recyclers can’t pay the high price paid by the Chinese. "It’s an environmental disgrace," says Clare Wilton, spokesperson for environmental group Friends of the Earth, suggesting that the UK should expand its recycling industry instead.

Green Plans

The Bangladesh government is considering reviving a US $70 million biodiversity project in the country. Efforts are on to increase conservation efforts at various places, including Sundarbans, St Martin Island and Cox’s Bazar, forest and environment minister Tariqul Islam announced recently. The government is also undertaking a mega programme of afforestation and protection of forests from the salinity caused by withdrawal of river water in the upper riparian. The minister expressing concern about the destruction of forest and wildlife in the Sundarbans, said the government would introduce micro-credit schemes to help income-generation and discourage people from destroying wildlife and forests.

107 words

For those dead….and alive

The biggest tobacco trial till date started last month in the US, when the government filed a US $ 280 billion civil suit case against the tobacco industry, charging then with concealing, for decades, the harmful effects of smoking and for illegally marketing cigarettes to children. Apart from recovering the money from the accused, the lawsuit is also aimed at formulating stricter tobacco legislation. The accused include Philip Morris USA (makers of Marlboro) and its parent Altria Group, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, British American Tobacco (Investments), Lorillard Tobacco, Liggett Group, Council for Tobacco Research-USA and the Tobacco Institute. Frank Marine, a lawyer of the US justice department, said the case "is about a 50-year pattern of misrepresentation, half-truths and lies".

CSE/Down to Earth Feature Service
133 words

Dose of relief