Making best out of waste: The chemistry behind handling hazards

As intrinsic as chemistry is to life, the chemical industry is to modern lifestyles - in converting raw materials like oil, metals and minerals, even air and water into usable products like polymers, petrol, steel, carbonated drinks and medicines. The modernisation of the industry has seen progressive improvements in manufacturing and handling processes, as much to contain waste and ensure safe disposal as to improve efficiencies. A key initiative in this effort was the institution of the Responsible Care program in 1985 by the Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association, an initiative that expanded significantly after the American Chemistry Council, in 1988, made adherence to the Responsible Care guidelines mandatory for any company wanting to do business with it and its members. The chemical industry has since been recognised as a global leader in industry self-regulation, an exemplar worldwide in improving risk management in addressing safety in manufacturing processes and in use, waste disposal and pollution control. High-risk industries - such as nuclear and oil and petrochemicals industries - have been especially eager to emulate the self-regulation modules.
 
Taking responsible
The Responsible Care guidelines address a gamut of practices that impact society and the environment. This includes commitment to safe manufacturing, transport and disposal of hazardous products, including educating distributors, vendors, customers and others about safe and environment-friendly practices. Chemical companies have introduced closed transport systems, pipeline transfers and invested heavily in research to minimise the impact of waste on the environment. The most advanced chemicals companies, for example, adhere to the principles of ‘Waste Minimisation Hierarchy’ - streamline use of resources so that waste is reduced; use reuse or recycle resources at or near the point of waste generation to minimise waste and use of transportation; treat waste; and ensure proper disposal of waste.
 
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More than 3,000 plants owned by about 1,700 companies worldwide today follow the Responsible Care guidelines. During the decade ending December 2011, these companies invested almost $ 13 billion to improve safe, secure and environment-friendly processes at their facilities. In the US, these companies have been found to be five times safer than the average performance of companies in the country’s manufacturing sector, and nearly three times as safe as the chemicals business overall; these companies have been found to have reduced process safety incidents by 58 per cent between 1994 and 2011 and reduced hazardous releases to the air, land and water by more than 76 per cent between 1988 and 2011.
 
In India, the Indian Chemical Council (ICC), a member of the Responsible Care program, has actively engendered compliance to the Responsible Care guidelines among local manufacturers. In 2003, the council instituted an award for Best Responsible Care Committed Company in the country.
 
The chemistry of waste
Beyond self-regulation, the chemical industry plays - or has the potential to play - a crucial role in the disposal of waste and hazardous waste in the course of other economic and social activities. While India still has a long way to go to use this crucial potential to its advantage, in developed economies the chemicals industry acts as a catalyst in the proper disposal of household and municipal waste, as well as waste from the full range of industries, from manufacturing plants to hospitals, power generation units to ship-breaking yards.
 
It does - or can - play a critical role in reducing the risks associated with waste disposal by treating waste so that it is reduced to non-hazardous elements that may be used safely in landfills, recycled or re-used. Anaerobic digestion and other chemical and physical treatment procedures help to reduce the hazardous nature of waste. Conventionally, all explosive, flammable, toxic, carcinogenic, corrosive and infectious products are classified as ‘hazardous waste’. But almost all waste can be harmful if improperly disposed - even paper can become a breeding ground for disease if dumped improperly.
 
In India, only about a fifth of the hazardous industrial wastes (including medical waste) generated are incinerated. Most solid hazardous waste is dumped in landfills without ensuring proper care to have a sufficiently thick impervious layer on top.
 
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Poorly planned landfills in Surat became the breeding grounds for the 1994 plague epidemic in Surat - which inspired the Clean India Campaign public interest litigation for proper waste management in 1996. Such landfills continue to proliferate across India - in Mumbai’s Chembur, one of the largest slums in the city has come up on a still-unstable landfill, huts ‘floating’ on large rubber tyres and overrun by rats and other vectors of disease.
 
Wealth in waste
Proper treatment of waste can not only obviate such risk, and prevent health hazard, it can actually procure economic benefit. State pollution control boards in India have estimated that using waste for energy generation can produce as much as 1022-MW electricity, the bulk of it from distilleries (400+ MW) and sugar mills (290 MW). Composting of solid waste can yield fertiliser; incineration, combustion and gasification can yield energy and heat; biomethanation can yield biogas. Thus, waste management, beyond mitigating hazard, is also an indicator of frugality, a means to address deficits. 
 
Given this, the chemical industry, through initiatives such as Responsible Care, has not only been looking at how to recycle waste, it has been at the forefront of waste prevention as much as waste treatment. Globally, the Responsible Care program, through its several associates in individual countries, where the programs are at different stages of implementation, emphasises waste prevention and curtailing waste through process efficiencies, through exchange of knowledge, technologies and expertise.
 
Its self-regulation has been an indicator of the chemical industry’s commitment to institute best practices in the sector. Inadvertently, it has also shown how self-regulation can effectively help businesses - especially the specialised hi-tech sectors - to put their best foot forward … and act as responsible corporate citizens.

References:

• http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11149-012-9197-0#page-1
• http://responsiblecare.americanchemistry.com/

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The author* is the President, CEO & Chairman, Dow Chemical International Pvt Ltd and APAC Regional Director, Functional Materials
 
*The views expressed by the author in this article are personal