Chapter 11 - Industrial Collaborative Solutions

Abstract

This chapter presents various solutions for environmental issues that involve polluting manufacturing industries themselves. During 1950–1980, industry discharged industrial wastewaters into municipal sewers and sewage treatment plants. The free or nominal use of the municipal system has long been an unofficial “boon” to industry. Even the prohibitive charge to industry has often been economically acceptable to industry as it avoided legal and/or managerial responsibilities on the part of the industry itself. Because of the problems and ineffectiveness of combined treatment, as well as the situations that automatically call for its rejection, industry has sought other solutions. The most logical and used solution is that of reusing its wastes in which wastes are reused within the industrial plant itself. The next potential for waste reuse is to contract with a “scavenger” collector to transport such wastes to a large, central industrial waste disposal plant. The last waste reuse technique involves the direct marketing of waste as a resource for another industrial plant. Because of the inadequacies of combined treatment, a new solution has evolved, which is known as environmentally balanced industrial complex (EBIC). The EBIC is a selective collection of compatible industrial plants located together in one area (complex) to minimize (or eliminate) both environmental impact and industrial production costs. These objectives are met by utilizing the waste materials of one plant as the raw materials for another with a minimum of transportation, storage, and raw material preparation. When a manufacturing plant neither treats its waste, nor stores or pretreats certain of its raw materials, its overall production costs are reduced significantly.