UPPCB imposes fine on four Noida hospitals for not segregating bio-medical waste

In a first, the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) has proposed a penalty on four private hospitals in Noida for lapses in bio-medical waste segregation, officials said.

The moves come a week after the Uttar Pradesh Solid Waste Monitoring Committee imposed a penalty of ₹ 2.8 crores on three Noida’s private hospitals for defunct effluent treatment plants (ETPs) and improper segregation of waste.

According to the officials, the four hospitals, all located in Sector 65 and 66, were not segregating the bio-medical waste properly and thus the board has recommended proposing penalties of ₹1,37,000, ₹1,50,000, ₹1,43,750 and ₹1,31,250 on them respectively.

The recommendations were sent to the UPPCB headquarters in Lucknow for the final approval, officials said.

The penalty varied based on the amount of waste generated by the hospitals, officials added.

“This is for the first time that we have recommended penalties for improper segregation of waste on hospitals in the entire Gautam Budh Nagar district. Earlier, we when found irregularities upon inspections, the hospitals were simply given served a notice asking them to segregate the bio-med waste properly,” Anil Singh, regional officer, UPPCB (Noida), said.

Singh added that hospitals are supposed to segregate the bio-medical waste in four different colour-coded bags. The colours include – yellow for infected materials and human tissues or organs, red for plastics like syringes, white for metal like needles among others, and blue for glasswares.

“At times, the hospitals either mix the waste or put them in wrong bags, or put the usual or non-bio-medical waste like solid waste into a colour-coded waste bags which affects the treatment process or leads to pollution while treatment,” Singh said.

According to officials, about 1,500 to 2,000 kilograms of bio-medical waste is collected every day from about 1,000 collection points or healthcare facilities like hospitals, clinics, pathology labs among other facilities from across Gautam Budh Nagar, primarily from Noida and Greater Noida.

The collected waste is then taken to two common bio-medical waste treatment facility (CBMWTF) in Meerut. Two private authorised agencies collect and manage the district’s bio-medical waste at the two CBMWTF in Meerut.

“Proper segregation of bio-medical waste can only be done at the user’s end. If proper segregation is not followed, then the waste goes for the wrong treatment process. In Noida and Greater Noida, most of the hospitals segregate the waste properly. The only issue is with the hospitals in western Uttar Pradesh, especially Lucknow,” said Sanjay Kaushik, manager at Synergy Waste Management, one of the agencies managing a CBMWTF in Meerut.

Kaushik said different processes are involved for different types of bio-medical waste The colour coded bags are never opened at the treatment facility and are rather fed directly to the treatment machines.

The waste from yellow bags is incinerated and waste in red bags is sterilized and then sent for recycling. The waste in white bags is either encapsulated in lime and sent for metal recovery and the blue bag waste is disinfected and recycled.

“The infected waste, which is collected in yellow bags, is incinerated. If the waste is not properly segregated in colour-coded bags and plastic is mixed with the yellow bag waste then the entire lot will be incinerated. This is can lead to several problems as the plastic or other types of waste will produce spurious gases which cause pollution and affect the environment,” Kaushik said.

First Published: Jul 25, 2019 23:01 IST