Clean and Green Applications Towards Sustainable Development: A Case Study in Select Sugar Distillery and Cement Industries in Tamil Nadu

Introduction

Industrial pollution is one of the serious environmental problems in India. Industrial pollution control policies from 1974 to date have attempted to decrease pollution through the regulatory mechanism (Sahu 2021b).Regulatory methods were ineffective in controlling pollution from industries leading to command and control (CC) technology (Daset al. 2021)as an alternative to regulatory agencies. Also, market-based instruments (MBI) (Sarker et al. 2021) started to exert influence in supplementing the existing regulatory rules. Even market-based instruments could not bring industrial pollution to a complete halt. So the millennium development goal 2015 aimed at achieving “sustainability” by using science and technology to a great extent (Dora et al. 2015). An older treatment technology like the end of pipe technology can be replaced by an advanced treatment process like “clean and green” technology (Bhupendra and Sangle 2015, Pan et al. 2021, Du et al. 2021, Hu et al. 2021). Though this technology came into practice in the developed world and India in one and a half-decade, the efficiency of “clean technology” is yet to be studied systematically. According to the central pollution control board, about 2522 large and medium scale industries in the red category comprise 17 different manufacturing products (Sawhney and Rastogi 2015). These revealed that only 71 percent of the total industry in the 17 categories have adequate pollution control facilities to comply with regulations, and were found others default concerning pollution control (Schellenberg et al. 2020). For industries that are non-compliant with laws mandating pollution technology, 478 units have been closed down due to ineffective pollution control (Bhandari and Shrimali 2018). The CPCB and India planning commission in 2011 has set an objective to bring “rapid ecologically sustainable development” industrial growth and proposed to mandate large and medium scale industries to use “clean or green technology (Naveen et al. 2022j). The present study realizes the objectives in the Indian context; Tamil Nadu was selected as a research study area. There are 11 critically polluted districts in Tamil Nadu for industrial pollution (Kathuria and Turaga 2014). There are about three thousand industrial units in Tamil Nadu classified under the three categories of industries red, orange and green. Of those 192 red category industries, three industries were closed due to inadequate pollution control facilities (Arif et al., 2021). There are seven critical polluted industries (iron and steel, Cement, sugar, fertilizers, paper and paper board, copper, and aluminum) that release suspended particulate matter of six kiloliters per day of this; more than five kiloliters (85 percent) is generated by medium and small scale industries (Gupta 2012, Pacharuri, 2018). About four hundred units discharge effluent into the river without any prior treatment. A thousand tanneries in Vellore, Kancheepuram, Dindigul, and Erode districts lead to the palar basin being affected due to untreated effluent water(Kumutha and Karthikeyan 2022). Many textile units in Tiruppur, Erode, and Karur contaminates the Noyyal and Amaravathy river water. There are five main industrial sectors in Tamil Nadu: Ariyalur, Coimbatore, Vellore, Chennai, and Cuddalore, which has thermal, Cement, chemical, and other industry like dairying, electroplating, chemical and fertilizers (Agro-chemicals), mining industries, ores, mineral processing industries and a variety of different industries which generate large quantities of solid waste (Selvam et al. 2017). A list of (Red-Large scale category) polluting industries in Tamil Nadu is given below in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

List of large scale industries in Tamil Nadu