“BOI is the main investment promotion agency in the country and it has been involved in establishing Export Processing Zones (EPZ) from the year 1978. It is a must to promote industrialization for the benefit of the country. While promoting industrial development, we as a responsible entity have understood our duty towards conserving nature and are ready to take a stride into the direction of urban forestry” Said Upul Jayasuriya Chairman of BOI.
One of the main areas where the BOI has taken the lead in environmental protection is in the management of the Board’s 12 Export Processing Zones (EPZ). These are modern facilities where enterprises have set up factories. The BOI provides these enterprises with all the basic infrastructure facilities at those zones for the purpose of manufacturing goods.
Among the facilities that enterprises enjoy is a safe drinking water supply conforming to the WHO standards and a comprehensive waste water collection and treatment system (Common waste water treatment plant) for the safe disposal of effluent arising from the manufacturing process. This service to investors has also been provided as an integral part of the basic infrastructure.
Within the Zone a key area of environmental protection is the disposal of common waste water at treatment plants. In this instance the industries are required to pretreat the effluents to limits specified by the BOI. This effluent is further treated to ensure that it meets the National Standard prior to been discharge.
Treated waste water discharge from the Zone is now used by an enterprise for gardening by drawing up a pipeline from the treated waste water outlet. This Company is Noyon Lanka (Pvt) Ltd at the Biyagama EPZ.
Another important area is solid waste disposal. In this case a common site is provided by BOI to deal with the waste.
Noise pollution is also maintained within the national standard with the BOI EPZs. BOI also ensures that Stack emissions are to be maintained with the CEA interim standards.
Ambient quality (Air pollution) is also maintained with the National standards. BOI also has many projects and industries that are located outside the EPZs. In the case of those industries there is a requirement to treat the effluent to the relevant National Standard prior to disposal. Industries also adopt their own disposal facilities for solid waste; ensure that noise levels are maintained within the national standards with limits based on the area where the factory located. Stack emissions and ambient quality have also to meet the national standards.
In order to ensure that standards are met the BOI monitors the compliance with this requirement through the Environmental Protection Licence procedure (EPL).
The EPL is issued with the concurrent of the CEA. In the rare cases of non-compliance by a BOI enterprise, industries are made to rectify for the shortcomings.
One of the major concerns of the BOI is to ensure that solid waste is reduced re-used and recycled by the BOI enterprise. This ensures that the environment is protected and that products which are non-degradable are utilized the maximum.
For example rubber products are not biodegradable however they have been disposed of in a number of ways. Damaged Rubber Gloves from industries are now exported to China instead of being thrown on a dumpyard as it was done in in the past. In China these Gloves are shredded and used to manufacture rubber soles of shoes. This is the major improvement from the earlier situation in the early 1990, when rubber gloves were simply thrown away and being non-degradable became a major problem. Another case of solid waste recycling is the disposal of solid rubber tires and latex from products used in the manufacture of cushions, pillows. These products are now crushed and the resulting material used for the manufacture of mattress borders.
Many BOI enterprises had become in fact leaders in the protection of environment. Leader in this field includes Brandix Casualwear Industries at Seeduwa and C K T Apparel (Pvt) Ltd at Agalawatte.
At each of the BOI Zones a land area had been allocated to tree planting with the idea of creating a forest within the Zone. The project will be starting simultaneously at all BOI Export Processing Zone on 28th July 2015.
