Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
10. THE GREEN CHEMISTRY & GREEN ENGINEERING – A LONG TERM
STRATEGY FOR INDUSTRIAL EFFLUENTS
All the solutions generally discussed get restricted to addressing the
manifestation of the disease (in the case of water pollution, it gets restricted to
improving the methods of treatment). While this is an inescapable short-term
measure, the medium- and long-term vision must examine ways to reduce the
pollution load at its source. It is in this context that Green Chemistry offers very
interesting possibilities.
The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and the 12 Principles of Green Engineering
are the guiding principles. They are listed at the end of this section.
For example, in a pharmaceutical production process, the current industrial
practice is to collect and mix all these effluents together so that the acidic streams
partially neutralise the alkaline stream and the neutralisation cost during primary
treatment can be reduced. This mixing creates a cocktail of 40-50 different
chemicals. It is impossible to separate or recycle them or to recover any solvent or
product; the only option is to take the effluent for some end-of-pipe treatments
like aerobic or anaerobic treatment, biological or biochemical treatment,
incineration, etc.
The key issue here is that this just converts one form of waste into another. Most
of the time, we have very little or no idea about the ecological impact of these
molecules. Hence, this is potentially a huge threat to human health, our water
and other living creatures. It is also a cost-centric approach to dealing with waste
and hence adds up to the cost of production. Finally, it is a tremendous waste of
resources.
Here is where green chemistry and engineering can play a vital role now and in
future. They address the environmental challenges at the source level, rather than
on treating waste after it is generated.
All of this might seem significantly challenging and frustrating as we go through
the laboratory and scale-up. However, the rewards are enormous, as the
process chemistries become simple to execute. Approaching a product from the
standpoint of green chemistry offers not only quality products but also lowest cost
Annexures
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