The disposal of chrome-sludge continues to pose an environmental challenge. A tripartite collaboration between the Central Leather Research Institute in Madras, Regional Research Laboratory in Trivandrum and the TNO Institute of Applied Physics-Eindhoven in The Netherlands, has led to a major breakthrough in chrome-sludge utilisation for converting it into coloured brick manufacture.

A viable technology which can be adopted for making coloured brick from a clay and chromesludge mixture was developed and tested at the rate of 5,000 bricks-per-batch. The 'bricks have also been subjected to successful chrome leachability tests .