As Europe tightens its environmental laws and dismantles the industries that once defined its post-war economic power, a troubling pattern is emerging. The factories that Europe no longer wants—deemed too toxic, too unsafe, or too politically explosive to operate—are being resurrected thousands of miles away. Their new destination is not a scrapyard but India, where they are reassembled under the familiar banners of “technology transfer,” “industrial modernisation,” and “Make in India.”

Behind this benign vocabulary lies a stark and unsettling truth: Europe is scrubbing itself clean by exporting its industrial toxins, and India is accepting these rejected plants as symbols of progress. What is unfolding is not merely the movement of machinery, but a new form of pollution colonialism—the outsourcing of environmental harm from the global north to the global south.

The Italian PFAS Disaster Finds a New Home in Maharashtra

This simmering story erupted into public consciousness with one seemingly routine transaction: an Indian company’s decision to acquire equipment from a shuttered Italian factory and relocate it to Maharashtra. On the surface, it appeared like any cross-border industrial deal. But this was no ordinary machinery. This was the technological skeleton of one of Italy’s most notorious environmental offenders: the Miteni PFAS plant in Vicenza.

In 2018, Italy closed the Miteni facility after it contaminated groundwater across the Veneto region and poisoned more than 350,000 people. After years of public protests and accumulating medical evidence, Italian courts convicted the plant’s senior management in 2024 for “environmental devastation.”

The plant’s core product was PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, infamously known as “forever chemicals.” Their danger lies not only in their toxicity but in their indestructibility. Once released into soil or water, PFAS persist for centuries. They accumulate in blood, liver, breastmilk, and tissues. Their links to cancer, infertility, immune dysfunction, developmental disorders, and hormonal damage in children are well-established.

Italy decided it had had enough. It phased out PFAS production and dismantled the Miteni facility.

But India did not step back. It stepped in.

Laxmi Organic Industries, through its subsidiary Viva Lifesciences, acquired Miteni’s decommissioned equipment and shipped it to Lote Parashuram MIDC, an industrial estate bordering the ecologically fragile Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary. By 2023, the ghost of Italy’s PFAS nightmare was resurrected under Indian skies, ready to operate near villages, rivers, and agricultural land.

Italy washed its hands of the contamination risk. India accepted it willingly.

Europe’s Dirty Exodus Is Accelerating — And India Is the Preferred Destination

The story does not end with Italy. Across Europe, a slow but steady exodus of polluting industrial infrastructure has begun. Companies facing stringent environmental regulations, rising carbon tariffs, and fierce community resistance are dismantling plants that no longer fit Europe’s vision of its green future.

Germany offers the next example. At Dow Chemical’s Stade plant, two polymer trains producing polycarbonates—materials associated with toxic emissions and complex waste—are being dismantled and packed into shipping containers. Their next stop: Dahej, Gujarat, where the Indian company Deepak will rebuild and restart them by 2028.

These polymer trains are not simply industrial assets. They are Europe’s discarded environmental liabilities. And this will not be Deepak’s first European transplant.

Meanwhile:

• Dow, the world’s largest chemical manufacturer, is closing: An ethylene cracker in Böhlen, Germany, Chlor-alkali and vinyl (CAV) assets in Schkopau, Germany, A siloxanes plant in Barry, UK

• INEOS is shutting chemical units in Rheinberg, Germany.

• SABIC is closing its Teesside olefins cracker in Redcar, UK.

All these assets share one common trait: they are too hazardous, too outdated, or too burdened by European public opposition to continue. Yet they are not headed for dismantling. They are being put up for sale—and the buyers are overwhelmingly in India.

From Dahej to Mangaluru, Visakhapatnam to Panipat, Paradeep to the Konkan belt, India’s coastal and agricultural regions are being positioned as global chemical hubs. What Europe rejects as ecological burdens, India is embracing as investment opportunities.

Pollution Colonialism: The Export of Environmental Harm

Industry leaders and policymakers in India often frame this influx of used equipment as economic opportunity. But beneath this rhetoric lies a disturbing economic logic: Europe reduces pollution by exporting it; India cheapens production by absorbing it.

Europe’s environmental laws and carbon pricing systems make continued operation of old, dirty plants economically unviable. India’s relatively lax environmental enforcement makes them profitable again.

This model—often described as “pollution arbitrage”—is simple:

• What is too dirty for Düsseldorf becomes acceptable in Dahej.

• What is protested in Vicenza becomes permissible in Lote Parashuram.

• What Europe deems high-risk becomes “development” in India.

The machinery is described in official paperwork as “brownfield upgrades” or “technology repurposing.” But these euphemisms obscure the essence of the transaction: Europe exports its toxicity, and India imports its peril.

The Forever-Chemical Threat That India Cannot Afford to Ignore

Among all the hazardous substances involved, PFAS pose the most catastrophic risk. They are used in everyday items—non-stick cookware, food packaging, waterproof fabrics, firefighting foams—but their invisible toxicity spreads far beyond household products.

PFAS have now been detected in: Rainwater, Arctic snow, Soil and surface water, The blood of 97% of humans on Earth

In India, where environmental containment systems are already overburdened, the consequences of renewed PFAS production could be devastating. These chemicals cannot be broken down naturally, nor can they be effectively removed from groundwater once they seep in. Once they enter aquifers or crop fields, they remain for generations—damaging DNA, weakening immune systems, and accumulating in the bodies of children yet to be born.

By allowing the machinery from Miteni—the plant that caused one of Europe’s worst chemical disasters—to operate again, India risks replicating Veneto’s tragedy at a larger scale and in a far more densely populated region.

The Price India Will Pay: Water, Soil, Health, and the Future

This issue goes far beyond one plant or even one industry. It concerns the kind of future India is building for itself.

India’s major chemical hubs—Dahej, Paradeep, Mangaluru, Visakhapatnam—are located near sensitive ecological zones: estuaries, mangroves, protected forests, aquifers, and agricultural belts that sustain millions. A single contamination event could poison groundwater irreversibly, infiltrating food chains, livestock, and human biology.

This is happening in a country already fighting:

• Rising cancer clusters near industrial zones

• Poisoned rivers such as the Periyar and Yamuna

• Rapidly declining soil fertility

• High rates of respiratory and reproductive disorders

To add Europe’s hazardous leftovers to this fragile mix is not development. It is national sabotage masquerading as growth.

The Global North Cleans Up, The Global South Pays the Price

As the global north becomes increasingly aware of the toxic legacy of chemicals like PFAS, it is phasing them out. But instead of shutting down production entirely, it is shifting the risk to nations like India—where environmental regulations are weaker, labour is cheap, and opposition from local communities is easier to suppress.

This is how Europe reduces its contamination footprint: not by eliminating pollution, but by exporting it.

The consequence?

Europe breathes cleaner air, Europe protects its groundwater, and Europe reduces its cancer risks.

On the contrary, India inhales the fumes, India’s rivers absorb the waste, and India’s children carry the toxic legacy in their blood.

India Must Refuse to Become the World’s Chemical Graveyard

The warnings are clear. The pattern is unmistakable. The consequences will be irreversible.

Unless India halts the relocation of decommissioned, high-risk chemical plants into its territory, it is well on its way to becoming the world’s final dumping ground—a graveyard of toxic industries fleeing environmental scrutiny in the West.

It is time for India to assert, loudly and decisively:

We will not be the burial ground for Europe’s toxic legacy. We refuse to trade our soil, forests, rivers, farms, and health for outdated machines and dangerous illusions of development. India must not inherit the poisons that Europe no longer wants.

With inputs from agencies

Image Source: Multiple agencies

© Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Vygr Media.