Hotels, hospitals lack tech to dispose of waste
NEW DELHI: Preliminary inspection reports by National Green Tribunal-appointed committees reveal the sorry and sometimes dangerous state of waste disposal by Delhi’s mass waste producers such as hospitals, hotels, railway stations and other public utilities that serve hundreds if not thousands of people daily.
In Delhi, everyone from the five-star hotels to the biggest government hospitals and railway stations were found disposing waste in violation of government norms in the absence of proper infrastructure and trained personnel.
Over 100 of the city’s hospitals, hotels, residential societies, railway stations and bus depots were surveyed and found discharging untreated and partially treated sewage into the general sewage lines adding to the pressure on municipal waste treatment plants.
A new set of waste management rules for different kinds of waste (solid, plastic, biomedical, construction and demolition, e-waste and hazardous waste) were laid down by the environment ministry in March 2016, and this is the first time that such an extensive stock taking was undertaken.
Waste segregation is essential for its treatment, but is not a common practice. Treatment would mean setting up a sewage treatment plant (STP) and in the case of hospitals an effluent treatment plant (ETP), that are mostly non-existent or non functional, the committee found.
“Across the country the situation is no better. There is a lack of awareness and the huge costs of installing plants is a deterrent,” said Satish Sinha, associate director of Toxics Link, a Delhibased NGO.
For every hospital bed, 1-2 kg of biomedical waste is generated daily in India. Though only 15% of the biomedical waste is infectious or hazardous, mixing it with non-hazardous waste means contaminating it all. Almost 10% of hospitalised patients in developing countries will acquire at least one health- care-associated infection, according to the World Health Organisation.
Most hospitals inspected segregated biomedical waste, but many weren’t equipped to treat their waste on-site. Palika Maternity Hospital in Delhi’s upscale Lodhi Colony neighbourhood is one of a few healthcare facilities in the capital that have an effluent treatment plant (ETP). The plant generates about 1 kg of sludge daily, which is used by the hospital as manure. The sludge is hazardous and requires a treatment and disposal facility but Delhi has no such plant.
Sludge is what is left behind in the treatment process and can be extremely toxic.
Most 5 and 4-star hotels surveyed had installed STPS but were found not to be functioning properly and there was no proper sludge management.
These places manage to put in place infrastructure, however faulty, but the smaller hotels and banquet halls have no incentive to invest in better waste management facilities, officials at the Central Pollution Control Board, said.
New Delhi Railway station that handles over 1 lakh people every day does not have an on-site sewage treatment plant as required by the rules. At Sarai Rohilla station, not only is there no STP, there are no sewer lines for wastewater, the committee found during inspection.
Bus depots are even in worse condition, with no proper segregation, treatment or recordkeeping, the Ngt-appointed panel has pointed out.
“We are making STP and ETP together and the Central Public Works Department is expected to deliver it by this year-end,” Dr AK Gadpayle, the hospital’s medical superintendent at Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, said. Earlier, the deadline of the project was July.