Yogendra Chaudhry



nobody can deny that damage caused by pollution is greater than the investment needed for setting up adequate pollution control measures. The data on pollution being generated is alarming. In Delhi, the industrial effluent load is 320 million litres per day (mld). Over 16 drains discharge about 1,900 mld of sewage water into the Yamuna. Of the total air pollution, over 25 per cent is generated by industries, and the other cities are no better. Both industrialised and developing countries spend a considerable percentage of their gross national product ( gnp ) on pollution control but the problem does not seem to be nearing a solution. So what can be done?

Pollution is an indicator of an inefficient process. It represents a wastage of world resources, an economic drain on a nation and a financial loss to an enterprise. If inefficiencies could be reduced, then pollution, too, could be controlled. The overall efficiency of energy use in most industrialised countries is 40 per cent. Over half the energy used is wasted and appears in one form or another as waste-heat that has an impact on the climate. As a result, industries are facing increasing opposition from the civil society.

A great deal of time and money is wasted in building effluent-treatment systems. In many cases, a change of process or raw materials would ensure the problem is overcome with minimum costs and without affecting the quality of the product. The traditional pollution control system solves no problem, it only complicates it. Take for example purifying wastewater. The process creates sludge, while burning chemical wastes creates particulate matter.

Thus, what emerges is an environmental paradox. It takes resources to remove pollution; pollution removal generates residues; it takes more resources to dispose of this residue and disposal of residue also produces pollution. The conventional controls methods are the so-called