The PCB notification, issued in the wake of an earlier supreme court directive to some coir exporters and small scale producers involved in bleaching and dyeing of coir fibre/ yarn without proper sludge disposal system, to adhere to the PCB norms within a specified time limit, comes as a great relief to the industry as a whole, a board press release said.

This followed strenuous efforts made by the Coir Board to get the sledge tested in various laboratories for detailed analysis, including at the Central Coir Research Institute (CCRI) of the Board at Kalavoor, Alappuzha, the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre, Lucknow and the Sriram Institute of Industrial Research, Bangalore, over a period of four years.

The satisfactory test analysis of the laboratories prompted the board to clear the sledge as a non-hazardous waste, Coir Board Chairman V S Vijayaraghavan said today.

However, the sledge accumulating at the effluent treatment plants of the sledge house still required to be tested and certified as non-hazardous waste as per the norms of the PCB since the effluent treatment process also involved additional usage of chemicals, Vijayaraghavan added.