Reaping benefits from cleaner industrial practices

Industrial waste polluting surroundings

Industry continues to pose a potential threat to environment, both globally and locally. It accounts for approximately one-third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and a large percentage of generated hazardous waste.
Day by day in our country increased industrial activity has been polluting the environment. Smoke emitted from factories, cotton waste, inorganic synthetic chemical, industrial waste dumped in the vicinity of factories or thrown into rivers and streams pollute the environment. Developed countries were alert to the menace and took timely remedial steps. But in developing countries, ecological balance is not being maintained and the danger of this imbalance is really very serious.
For the past two decades, industry in most developed countries have relied on end-of-pipe pollution abatement as the main pollution control technique. Although end-of-pipe treatment is effective, it has proved to be expensive. Nowadays more progressive countries are calling for cleaner industrial production, a preventive approach that attempts to minimize waste. This holistic approach demands that the industrial pollutants be treated not at the end-of-pipe stage, rather they are prevented altogether, throughout the production process. Cleaner production techniques range from inside-the-factory changes in management, to shop-floor operations and processes, equipment and sometimes alterations in the products themselves. Cleaner production means adapting industrial processes to use raw materials and energy more efficiently, to eliminate toxic raw materials and to generally reduce emissions and waste.
Enterprises everywhere are reaping environmental and financial benefits from cleaner industrial production. Many developing countries and economies in transition are unaware of the benefits of preventive measures which not only reduce waste and the consumption of energy and water but also offer the prospect of utilizing or recycling by products. In some cases these countries do not have information about cleaner production and in other cases, they fail to appreciate the environmental and financial benefits of the cleaner production activities. One hopes, our factory managements realize their scope of benefits.

The writer is Librarian , BGMEA University of Fashion & Technology (BUFT), [email protected]