DoE agrees to place importance on sludge management rules

The Department of Environment (DoE) has agreed to add the industrial sludge management guidelines to the environment regulation aiming to bring the polluting industries to book.
The agreement came following a stakeholder consultation organised by GIZ in the city on Tuesday.
Academicians, international consultants, representatives of Bangladesh garments and knitware manufacturers and exporters associations, experts of chemical waste took part in the discussion.
The DoE together with Promotion of Social and Environmental Standards in the Industry (PSES), a joint program of the governments of Germany and Bangladesh, implemented by Deutsche GesellschaftfürInternationaleZusammenarbeit (GIZ), held the discussion.
Meeting sources said the DoE took the policy level decision as in absence of the regulation, most of the industrial units go unpunished even they set up effluent treatment plants (ETPs). Environmental regulation has put bindings on installation of ETPs for making industrial plants environment friendly but there is no regulation to punish the units, which discharge untreated sludge.
Sludge is the solid residue generated during treatment of wastewater. Currently there are no official instructions on how to dispose this sludge in an environmentally friendly manner, sources added.
With growing number of wastewater treatment plants installed across the country, disposal options and a national standard & guidelines for their proper management were imperative.
"Sludge generated from ETPs used in textiles and other industries pose serious threat to our environment. Sludge management Standards & Guidelines are extremely important as an initial step towards the solution of this problem," said Dr Rafique Ahmed, Director, International Convention, Department of Environment (DoE).
The DoE is quite serious about addressing this pollution issue and having this in mind, looking forward to the enhanced engagement with GIZ, he added.
Elke Shrestha, Senior Advisor of PSES, expressed hope that all the standards & guidelines for textile sludge, hazardous sludge from other industries and sludge from central effluent treatment plants (CETPs) in industrial zones will be finalised and gazetted soon to become part of the environmental regulations.
In 2009, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the PSES programme to support DoE to develop national Standards & Guidelines for textile sludge and its management. A joint committee on development of textile sludge standard and management was created just after signing of the MOU. The "Standards & Guidelines for Sludge -- Municipal, Industrial & CETP" was drafted by the German Association for Water, Wastewater & Waste (DWA) , a GIZ press release added.
The stakeholder session followed years of cooperation with DoE that involved collecting representative samples of sludge, sending them to Germany for laboratory analysis, drafting of Standards & Guidelines and training of DoE officials last year.
The session gave local experts and stakeholders the opportunity to discuss and exchange valuable suggestions with the international expert engaged in order to enhance the quality of the Standards & Guidelines.