Industrial water pollution - Strategy and methodology

The problems posed by water resources and their pollution are now increasingly on the agenda; long neglected, they can no longer be regarded as incidental.

For manufacturers, water has become an important criterion, a raw material like any other. The cost of water must be taken into account when establishing cost prices. The ever-increasing demand for water in the vast majority of industrial manufacturing techniques means that they have to face up to a number of constraints linked to water consumption.

The aim of this article is to show how an industrial pollution problem should be approached strategically and methodologically, insofar as the wastewater treatment plant should be considered not as a general-purpose purification machine, but as the ultimate remedy for the damage caused by pollution, since it is clearly the most costly and least satisfactory solution for the environment.