Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) is India's apex environmental regulatory body, constituted under Section 3 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, headquartered in Delhi under the administrative control of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). CPCB is the national counterpart to SPCBs; it does not directly issue CTE/CTO to factories (that is SPCB jurisdiction) but sets the standards, policies and frameworks that SPCBs are bound to implement.

CPCB's principal functions are: setting national standards — National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), effluent discharge standards under Schedule VI of the Environment Protection Rules 1986, hazardous waste categorisation, vehicular emission norms (BS-VI etc.); industrial categorisation — the Red/Orange/Green/White consent category list with associated Pollution Index scores; operating the EPR portals for e-waste, plastic, battery and tyre waste, including certificate trading and Environmental Compensation calculation; operating CAAQMS — the 500+ continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations feeding the National Air Quality Index dashboard; investigating major incidents independently of SPCBs (Bhopal-style chemical accidents, riverine pollution, oil spills); research through CPCB labs and partner institutions; and international reporting under conventions India is party to (Stockholm, Basel, Minamata, Montreal Protocol).

CPCB has statutory powers to issue directions to SPCBs under Section 18(1)(b) of the Water Act and Section 18(1)(b) of the Air Act — binding instructions that SPCBs must follow. CPCB also has direct enforcement powers in Union Territories where there is no SPCB, and concurrent jurisdiction with SPCBs in cases of national significance. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) routinely directs CPCB rather than individual SPCBs when issuing national-scope orders — for example the 2018 directions on ZLD for highly polluting industries, the 2023 directions on monsoonal flood-zone hazardous waste storage, and the 2025 directions on e-waste certificate price floor.

For recycling plants, CPCB matters in three concrete ways. First: the standards CPCB sets (effluent limits, stack emission limits, hazardous waste classifications) flow into every plant's CTO, so changes at CPCB level (e.g. tightening of PM stack limit from 50 to 30 mg/Nm³) progressively force capex upgrades. Second: the CPCB EPR Portal is the marketplace where recyclers sell EPR certificates to producers — registration, certificate generation rules, audit procedures and Environmental Compensation calculations are all CPCB-controlled, not SPCB. Third: CPCB conducts national audits of recyclers' physical recycling volumes against certificates issued — since 2023 over 100 e-waste recyclers' registrations have been cancelled by CPCB on audit reconciliation failures. The trade-off for industry is that CPCB has progressively become a stronger enforcement body than the SPCB system it was originally designed to coordinate.