Page 27 - Industrial Wastewater Treatment, Recycling and Reuse

10 Industrial Wastewater Treatment, Recycling, and Reuse

1.1.3 Treatment, Recycling, and Reuse
The industrial development model in India has gone through major revision
in recent years. Previously, the industrial model concentrated mainly on the
development of small-scale industries, thereby providing developmental
opportunities to rural sectors. It is known that the chemical industry is a
scale-sensitive industry, and its profitability increases with the scale of oper-
ation. Thus, giving incentives to small-scale chemical industries drastically
affected their ability to cater to their wastewater treatment needs. This
has resulted in a very large number of industries that practically faced threats
of closure for not meeting pollution control norms. Being a small-scale
industry has its own limitations by having its own research and development
for in-house operations and process developments, especially for wastewater
treatment. Further, providing solutions for wastewater treatment has dented
its profitability and sustainability substantially because of extra expenditures
for investing in land, equipment, and operations. This is therefore an excel-
lent case of economic development versus environmental sustainability.
In India, nearly 40% of the wastewater generated by the most polluting
industries comes from small-scale industries (Murty and Kumar, 2011). As
discussed earlier, the size of these industries makes the installation of a stan-
dard effluent treatment plant unaffordable for many. In order to resolve the
predicament of economic policy versus environmental pollution control,
common effluent treatment plant schemes have been set up. This facilitates
the sustainability of the small-scale industries by allowing them to treat their
effluents collectively.
Environmental sustainability is also directly related to the industry and its
profitability. Industry, in the basic definition of business, is required to make
a profit in order to be sustainable. To continue to be sustainable, industry
must progress through improved processes, research and development,
decreasing energy costs, and improving salability of its products. Zero waste
is a myth, by and large, and every industry generates waste in some form.
The treatment of waste eats into the profitability of the industry, and for this
reason, many times waste treatment takes a back seat in the overall operation
or the industrial process. It is important to recover valuable chemicals and
other materials from waste to improve profitability and to recycle important
constituents of the waste stream where possible. In its theme of recycle and
reuse, water is the last and very important significant component that can be
recovered, recycled, and reused back in the same industry or elsewhere.
However, this is not always possible. Further, where it is possible, the per-
centage of recovery of valuable chemicals/materials varies from industry to