Small Scale Plants for Resource Efficiency Training in the Indian Metal Industry

Metal industry in India employs about 1 300 000 people in approximately 12 000 organized units. These small and medium sized companies (SMEs) are either specialized coaters or fabricators with metal finishing as one of their operations. Less than 5 % of the companies actually conform to required environmental standards and material stream management systems are not in place. Waste acids containing heavy metals are typically discharged with the wastewater. Thus, with the expansion of the Indian automotive sector and the metal finishing industry, the pollution problem is being aggravated and is affecting surface and ground water. There is a lack of awareness of the specific benefits of energy and resource efficiency amongst the Indian SME metal companies and a lack of confidence in the relevance of wastewater treatment technologies resulting in a reluctance to invest. Thus, ACIDLOOP – a four-year project supported by the European Union under the SWITCH Asia Programme – was initiated as a joint project between several European and Indian partners. The project will lead to improved environmental quality and combat pollution through advanced water treatment measures and energy efficient processes.