Biomass Based Sustainable Model for the Management of Industrial Waste with Simultaneous Abatement of Climate Change

Small-to-medium scale enterprises/industries (SMEs) in most of the South Asian countries play a very crucial role in the socio-economic development of this region by providing employment, alleviating poverty and improving quality of life. However, with the rapid industrial growth in emerging economies in India in the last two to three decades has taken its toll by causing environmental pollution. Toxic and hazardous waste emanated from SMEs sector has resulted into negative and incapacitating impact on the overall human health and ecology. It is, therefore imperative to take appropriate environmental management deliberations to deal with such type of waste. In principle, there are several approaches to tackle the problems of waste. Conventionally, the most commonly adopted physical and chemical management processes/practices are beset with numerous problems of process efficiency, cost effectiveness, energy consumption and further disposal. These problems coupled with stringent norms of statutory bodies ultimately results into closure of the industry. Since the problems associated with conventional methods are manifold; biological mediated mitigation measures appears to be a promising stride and significant research is happening world over. The authors discuss one case study based on using live biomass thereby leading to an emerging management thought for sustainable waste management practices in emerging economies. The study shows that industrial waste can be treated effectively with concurrent mitigation of climate change