Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is seeking the approval of the Planning Commission for a proposed scheme for environmentally sustainable development of pharmaceutical industry through an action plan.

The DoP has prepared the proposal based on the recommendations of a task force set up on the environment hazards in the pharma sector and it is being submitted to the Plan Panel soon. The DoP wants to make it operational next year as the action plan proposed by the task force had suggested concrete steps to be followed upto 2012-13, sources said.

The SMEs are likely to benefit more from proposed cleaner environment interventions as the proposal has included more SME pharma units for environmental performance improvement as part of the proposed action plan and limit the scope of interventions to bulk drug manufacturing units as formulation production does not have similar complexity of problems.

The main thrust of the national plan includes measures on disaster management, ways to transform the existing industrial parks into eco-friendly, and basic parameters for the creation of new parks. The existing Environment Cell at the Department will be upgraded to an Environment & Hazard Management Cell having the responsibility for overall planning, coordinating and managing the activities including providing necessary approvals for implementation of the activities, making budgetary provisions etc.

The overall objective of the proposal is to systematically achieve environment and hazard management in pharmaceuticals sector in a phased manner following the state-of-the-art approaches and sustainable models integrating environment, energy, climate and hazard issues, and enabling supportive capacity, development of the key stakeholders/organizations, according to the report by the task force.

Pilot efforts will be held in the identified areas of work in a few States like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, along with capacity building through organisational development and documentation. In the second phase, it will be extended to more States. Third phase of the action plan will be state and national level policies, strategies and interventions.

According to the operational plan for the period upto 2012-13, in upto 100 selected pharmaceuticals units, environmental performance improvement, safety and occupational hazard management, development of onsite/offsite emergency plans and cleaner production will be demonstrated through the concepts of eco-profit, emergency/hazard management, energy efficiency, CDM, cleaner production techniques etc. leading to improved manufacturing processes, environmental quality and reduced risks/impacts on environment.