The Supreme Court (SC) has made it mandatory for all municipal corporations and state pollution control boards to use the ‘COVID19BWM App’ to track biomedical waste on a daily basis. This ensures that the waste is collected, transported and sent to a registered common biomedical waste treatment facility.
- The app was developed by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in May 2020 following the directions from the National Green Tribunal(NGT).
Background
The direction came on recommendations made in a report by the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA).
Key Info
i.The bench of Justices Arun Mishra, BR Gavai and Krishna Murari directed the municipal corporations to send the biomedical waste to the common biomedical waste treatment facility (CBWTF).
ii.The court also directed the Centre and CPCB to create a national barcode system or portal to track biomedical waste
iii.The municipal corporations and state pollution control boards have been asked to ensure that the common facilities have online continuous emission monitoring systems installed in the plants and that the data from this is transmitted to both the state board website as well as CPCB.
Note– It is not mandatory for the municipal corporations to register on the app earlier.
About the app
The app allows the generator of waste (urban local body in the case of home care and hospital or laboratory), the picker of the waste (transport of the ULB or the waste treatment facility) and the waste treatment operator to enter the data so that COVID-19 biomedical waste can be tracked and monitored.
Recent Related News:
i.The Government of India (GoI) has officially launched its 1st comprehensive coronavirus (COVID-19) tracking app called ‘Aarogya Setu’. The app has been developed by the National Informatics Center (NIC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in just 4 days.
ii.The Government of India has launched a Coronavirus risk-tracking Application (app) called “CoronaKavach”. The app was jointly developed by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) & the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
About CPCB
CPCB was constituted in September, 1974 under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974. It functions under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
Chairman- Shri Shiv Das Meena, IAS
