Historically, cities have been the driving force in economic and social development. At present approximately 307 million Indians live in nearly 3700 towns and cities spread across the country. During the last fifty years the population of India has grown two and half times, increasing urban population to five times. In numerical terms, India’s urban population is second largest in the world after China.

Some of the chief forces driving urbanisation today are shifting of jobs from agriculture to industry and the concentration of economic opportunities in the urban areas. Urbanisation is associated with higher incomes, improved health, higher literacy, improved quality of life and other benefits. Yet along with the benefits of urbanization come environmental and social ills.

Urban areas are the engines of productivity and growth in the country. This is manifest in the increasing contribution of urban sector to national income. As their incomes rise, they will consume greater quantities and varieties of goods and in the process will generate greater quantities of waste. It is estimated that 20-50 percent of the solid waste generated remains uncollected. As the living standards are rising the organic content in the waste is reducing and non-biodegradable wastes like metal, plastic and glass are on a rise. The impacts of this pollution are experienced both locally and at great distances from the source. Domestic and industrial discharges contaminate air, land, and water with nutrients and toxic. Increasing vehicular pollution in major urban centers is becoming an area of growing concern. Poor maintenance of vehicles, degraded condition of roads and use of un-pure fuels primarily precipitate the problems of air and noise pollution arising from operation of motorized vehicles. Urban air quality has deteriorated largely on account of growth in industrial activity, transportation needs and energy production. As estimated, 2000 metric tones of air pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere everyday, vehicular sources contributing the maximum.

Urban areas affect the environment in three major routes: the conversion of land to urban areas, the extraction and depletion of natural resources, and the disposal of urban waste.

Rapid urbanisation accounts for most of the renewable and non-renewable resource consumption and waste generation. These long-term ecological concerns are relevant to urbanisation as they grow and prosper, their consumption of resources and generation of wastes will rise accordingly, unless action is taken now to promote the efficient use of resources and minimisation of waste.

The challenge is to seek new management approaches that provide both for the needs of urban residents and protect environmental resources on which human life depends. Environmental Management Systems (EMS) is a new management approach for urban local bodies that can lead cities towards eco-cities.

Relevance of EMS to Township

India has entered the new century with a whopping 300 million urban population. Urbanisation continues to increase steadily bringing with it both the benefits of infrastructure growth and the environmental ills. The administrative units of small towns/cities, municipal towns and industrial townships are expected to satisfy a broad spectrum of citizens’ needs to provide various facilities and services. It has been observed that within their levels of jurisdiction they are unprepared to address the complex environmental challenges that are confronting them.

Why EMS for Urban Sector

Operation and development of urban areas involves:

Therefore, to achieve sustainable development, each operational unit in an urban area needs to manage the environmental aspects arising from its activities and services in a systematic procedure. The EMS framework integrates the environment into everyday business operations, and environmental stewardship becomes part of the daily responsibility of employees and citizens across. At different levels of townships, the relevance of EMS is:

To integrate environment management and promote the use of a systematic standard procedure in township administration.

To establish a management system in their day to day operation of the facility to minimise the environmental impacts, optimise resource utilisation and manage the waste in a standarised and continual procedure.

At the residents level

To involve all residents in a participatory manner for minimising the environmental impacts arising out of their use of the facilities and in the process of designing, establishing, implementing and maintaining the management system in a continual manner.

Till date, EMS as per ISO 14001 was widely accepted by industries. Realising the requirements of the management and the residents of the municipalities/towns/townships, Development Alternatives initiated facilitation of EMS in three Industrial townships of India and all the three has been certified for their ISO 14001 implementation. Implementation of EMS in townships is a good role model for other urban local bodies to replicate. Development Alternatives is grateful to the management, the staff and the residents of the following townships for giving an opportunity to demonstrate on ground the applicability of EMS concept and also for sharing the information.

This article gives complete EMS benefit of the township

" Kasturinagar" A residential colony of IFFCO Kalol

Kasturinagar is the residential colony of IFFCO Kalol unit. This compact township with 315 residential quarters meets the housing need of the factory complex for essential production, maintenance and supporting service staff. The township is situated on Ahmedabad - Mehsana highway, having distance of 25 kms from Ahmedabad, 17 kms from State Capital Gandhinagar and 50 kms from Mehsana. Factory is 5 kms down towards Mehsana from township. The township has a wholesome establishment having full-fledged infrastructure. Such as bank, post office, drinking water supplies (Reverse Osmosis treated), electricity supply, sewage treatment, solid waste management, estate section (for maintenance & repair jobs), horticulture, recreation club (for indoor - outdoor games, swimming pool, reading room and multipurpose hall) and a temple complex.

Kasturinagar residents (especially IFFCO staff) were well aware of the environmental issues threatening life existence, as they had exposure to Environmental Management System while IFFCO plant was going for ISO 14001 certification. But the EMS implementation separately for township was considered much useful in formalising a system, which was having a scientific approach for solving environment issues with the community participation. The perceived benefits by the implementation of EMS were;

Implementation of EMS for township is much different from implementing EMS for the factory; primarily because the processes in factory are known and the same have controllable parameters measurable on certain yardstick. The processes in township are only partially controllable as the inputs having environmental impacts are generated at individual level (at household level) and the commitment to a cause is unlikely to be uniform. Organizational structure can modulate the output through methodologies adopted, but unless inputs have regulated performance which, could be otherwise inconsistent.

The above mien called for comprehensive involvement of all the residents and to attain the same, core group was formulated consisting of:

Core group members were given comprehensive training on each stage of EMS implementation. The training consisted of general environmental issues, ISO-14001 standard requirements, and initial environmental review, determining significant environmental aspects that helped in setting objective and targets and developing environmental management programme. Internal auditor team also constituted from the core group members. The core group members acted as a conveyor for propagating EMS message to the township community.

Coordinated Effort – The Strength

Core group members effectively conveyed the message of EMS system to each and every resident and even the household servants were made aware. In this effort, roles of housewives were very important and effective. All the participants from contracted agencies also took active interest in doing environmental review, which helped in identifying the significant aspect for township and helping for setting up of objectives and targets for environmental improvement. In the township context all the objectives and targets required involvement of each resident and the response was overwhelming and very positive.

Involvement of employees on township establishment role was also complete. Each work area personnel actively participated in preparing documentation related to their area and in establishing the system confirming to EMS 14001 standard.

Awareness-training programmes were covered to all the residents of Kasturinagar Township (from children’s to aged person). The same were conducted in different ways like lecture, debate, elocution competition and spread of messages during celebrations like Navratri, Ganesh puja, Gokul Astami etc.

The first township in India to receive ISO 14001 certificate in May 2001 by accredited agency of repute like BVQI and also had a successful surveillance audit held in December 2001. Kasturinagar Township was the role model on its kind to show the benefits on ground to the outside world. The highlights of it are mentioned in the table given above.

Though the cost involved was huge in establishing EMS, the pay back period for all the above measure was in between six months to eighteen months, including the huge investment spent for waste water treatment. Apart from the initiatives mentioned in the Table 1, there were lot more taken by the township to reduce the adverse environmental impacts caused by its activities at various level of its operation, such as saying no to plastics and promoting the usage of biodegradable materials etc. The other major requirement of ISO 14001 was to follow the environmental and other legal requirements applicable to township. Such as dispensary in the township is managing its bio medical waste as per the Bio medical waste (management and handling) rules, 2000 by installation of needle shredder, disinfecting liquid waste generated before letting out in sewer line for further treatment etc. Establishment of safety requirements for the LPG godown in the township as per "The LPG Regulation and supply and distribution Order, 1993".

The task had enough challenges

After implementing EMS conforming to ISO-14001, when we look back at the process we are really amazed about the efforts put in and the challenges faced. Some of them are explained below:

The whole project was community oriented and the experience was much different from implementation of EMS at IFFCO plant. Inputs received from Development Alternatives (DA) were of great help in designing the EMS structure for the township. DA’s active involvement at every stage of implementation right from EMS training to train and conduct of initial EMS audit was of tremendous help. As a whole it was a new experience, rich in content, exemplary and above all much more satisfactory. A role model has been created for others to see and initiate the same in their local bodies.

This article mainly emphasis the benefits that Tatachem hospital has drawn

Tatachem Township is an Industrial Township privately owned by Tata Chemicals Ltd. located 10 Kms south of Okha Port and Bet Dwarka and 20 Kms north of the holy city of Dwarka, along the coast of Arabian Sea. Area of the Township is around 9 Sq. Km with a population of about 18000. Township was developed into a self-sufficient green and modern inhabitant with its own municipal services, such as lighting, water supply, roads, sanitation, medical services and family planning facilities.

Tatachem hospital is a 52-year-old, 150 bedded hospital owned and managed by Tata Chemicals Ltd. It acts as referral centre for 1.5 Lakhs population of Okhamandal Taluka. Facilities in the hospital can be broadly classified as:

Recent research has proven that considerable amount of environmental pollution is caused by hospitals and large quantities of waste are generated for treatment. Above all lots of resources are consumed by hospitals such as energy, water, chemicals (disinfection agents) and detergents. The mixed-up link between environment and health has lead to environmental protection becoming a main concern for the healthcare community. However, healthcare facilities, especially hospitals, have ironically been identified as major sources of pollution.

This made the management team here at Tata Chemicals recognise the need for an environmental management system (EMS) to be adopted under the scope of Tatachem township. When developing the EMS procedures, the detail environmental aspects and impacts for all the departments in the hospital were identified to check out its adverse environmental impacts caused by the operation. Each department was assessed on their consistency, frequency of environmental problems and the degree of control existing for mitigating such problems. This is organized into a comprehensive environmental management system document in the form of initial environmental review assessment.

EMS implementation for the entire township was taken up by the Quality Systems of Tata Chemicals limited; the challenge faced was, to motivate staff and residents about the benefits of EMS and the effective implementation of the same.

Team building and training: