Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Devavrat Kumar Sahani Vs State of Bihar dated 07/04/2025. The application was being registered on the basis of a letter petition dated December 27, 2024 sent to the NGT by the applicant, Devavrat Kumar Sahani, Muzaffarpur, …
Residents of Chajjupur, Shahdara, New Delhi, are very angry. But they are also scared. Although they have been fighting the polluting industries in their area, they refuse to come out in the open with their struggle. "We do not want to take on the industry,' explains a local shopkeeper. Residents …
Every once in a way, one comes across an instance that reestablishes faith in the tools of the establishment. Take the case of the Behala public interest litigation (pil), for example. About a hundred housewives from Behala, situated in the southern part of the city of Kolkata, approached the green …
battlelines are drawn over the setting up of a polyvinyl chloride (pvc) plant at Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. While environmentalists and local residents are pitted against the project promoter, the state authorities are yet to make their stand clear on the issue. The plant, being set up by Chennai-based Chemplast …
No discourse on development is possible today without adequate consideration of the environment component. There seems to be, however, a lack of basic understanding that environment and industrialisation or infrastructure development are complementary, not mutually exclusive, aspects of a country's growth and its people's well-being. The lookout, therefore, has been …
On World Environment Day this year, the Gas Authority of India Limited (gail) spent a small fortune issuing a colour advertisement in newspapers urging us to use plastic. gail wanted us to know this: by using plastic, we would save 20 million trees matured over 10 years especially for packaging …
the South African government seems to be in reverse gear in context of their environmental policies. While countries the world over are increasingly prohibiting the use of thin plastics, South Africa has modified its proposed ban on polythene bags by reducing their thickness from 80 microns to 30 microns. Reducing …
the Tamil Nadu (tn) government is all set to ban non-reusable plastics. A bill that was tabled in the tn assembly recently proposes to prohibit the sale, storage, transport and use of plastic carrybags, cups, tumblers, plates, spoons, forks and knives. Once passed, it will be called the Tamil Nadu …
This film, produced by Toxic Comedy Pictures, captures the directors and crew of this independent film travelling to America's vinyl manufacturing capital and beyond in search of answers to troubling questions about the nature of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Armed with two environmentalists from Greenpeace, Helfand visits her parents' vinyl-sided home …
cleaner recycling of electronic waste is something the industry has been looking forward to for the last one decade. It might just have got lucky. Considering that in the us alone in 1988 5-7 million tonnes of e-waste was generated and that 50-80 per cent of it was exported to …
a springy plastic wire that changes shape at the flick of a switch can become an answer to the woes of stroke patients. Cerebral arteries clogged by blood clots cause most strokes. At present, surgeons remove these clots by using drugs that dissolve the clots. But the risk of these …
Smug and surging If the annual plastic consumption in India rose by as little as one kilogramme per capita, the total demand would increase by about one million tonnes. The plastic industry looks forward to encashing this market potential. High profits and increasing demand ensure it grows exponentially "It took …
While the Indian government appeases the plastic industry, other countries have gone ahead and seen to it that the plastic industry owns up responsibility for its products. They have ably used extended producer responsibility (epr) to get the industry to clean up its act. A select group of countries have …
imagine a window pane repairing its own cracks! No, this is not science fiction. It can actually happen as has been shown recently by a team of scientists, who have developed a plastic which can heal itself when heated and cooled. Plastics that can heal themselves are not new. They …
Till last year, Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (clw), in West Bengal was just another nondescript place. Today, the walled railway township is hitting the headlines for its anti-plastic drive, which commenced in right earnest at the start of the new year. The campaign follows a statewide ban from January 1, 2002, …
india has again shown its willingness to be led by the West to commit euthanasia. It has adopted the draft technical guidelines for managing plastic waste prepared by the technical working group of the Basel Convention on January 14-15, 2002, in Geneva. About 100 countries, all signatories to the Basel …
January 1, 2002, saw the capital of Bangladesh nearly purged of polythene bags. This deadline was set by the government to ban the production, marketing and use of less than 20 micron, wafer-thin polybags in Dhaka. The country's environment and forests minister, Shahjahan Siraj, also made an impassioned plea to …
In India, the Union government banned the use and manufacture of coloured plastic bags less than 20 microns thick for carrying foodstuffs in 1999 under the Recycled Plastics Manufacture and Usage Rules. Several state governments have also enforced the rule. While Himachal Pradesh showed the way by enforcing the law …
