Green profile: EPD starts environment survey

Hospitals, restaurants, plastic bag manufacturers to be checked.

LAHORE: The Environment Protection Department initiated a campaign to compile environment profiles of hotels, laboratories, clinics, hospitals, restaurants and units manufacturing polythene bags in the city on Saturday.

Four inspectors will survey eight towns of the city and compile a report on the environmental conditions at these places in a week’s time.

The inspectors, according to directions issued by the late EPD Secretary Saeed Iqbal Wahla, will check that hospitals, laboratories and clinics are properly disposing of hazardous waste. Kitchens, storage rooms and dining areas of hotels and restaurants will be inspected for hygiene. The inspectors will also see that the restaurants and hotels have proper parking arrangements and were built after obtaining a no-objection certificate from the EPA.

Up to 120 units, most of them in Shalamar, Data Gunj Baksh, Ravi and Allama Iqbal Towns, will be checked for compliance with the Polythene Bag Ordinance 2002, which forbids the manufacture of black polythene bags or bags of a thickness of less than 15 microns.

“If a bag is thicker, it is recyclable. Bags less than 15 microns thick are not picked up by waste collectors and are the main cause of drain blockages,” said an inspector. The inspectors have also been ordered to check the drains in their respective regions.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2012.