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Waste Management in Indian Pharmaceutical Industries

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Environmental Management in India: Waste to Wealth

Abstract

In recent years, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has gradually evolved witnessing a major development in this sector. India has become the third largest API (Active pharmaceutical ingredient) merchant and is likely to be among the top three pharmaceutical markets by 2020. Though this will strengthen the economic growth of the country but subsequently it is fuelling the major environmental crisis such as waste generation. The unwanted materials produced at the time of manufacturing can turn out to be hazardous to the environment. Like the ash produced from the boiler furnace, impurities from the extraction unit and chemical waste from the processing unit. Today waste management practices become an integrated approach of waste reduction and recycling in order to enhance sustainable development. Common management practices employed by the pharmaceutical industries in India are Incineration, autoclaving, coagulation, constructed wetlands, and vermicomposting. Also, owing to the lack of proper disposal technique, some manufacturing industries often sell the hazardous/solid waste to the authorized re-processor or end user. This chapter elucidates the possible route of waste generation from pharmaceutical industries. It also shed some light on the current waste management technique used in India and also defines its shortcoming and limitations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, 826004, Jharkhand, India

    Shivangi Upadhyay & Alok Sinha

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  1. Shivangi Upadhyay
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  2. Alok Sinha
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Correspondence to Alok Sinha .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Excellence in Advanced Water and Environmental Research, Rabindranath Tagore University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

    Shalini Yadav

  2. Faculty of Engineering, Water and Water Structures Engineering Department, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

    Abdelazim M. Negm

  3. Research and International Affairs, Madhyanchal Professional University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

    Ram Narayan Yadava

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Upadhyay, S., Sinha, A. (2022). Waste Management in Indian Pharmaceutical Industries. In: Yadav, S., Negm, A.M., Yadava, R.N. (eds) Environmental Management in India: Waste to Wealth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93897-0_5

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