The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Biological approach to waste highlighted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 16, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Biological approach to waste highlighted

Staff Reporter

Incineration, land filling `do not address real problem'

Chennai : The New College Department of Biotechnology and the United States Educational Foundation of India (USEFI) jointly organised a one-day symposium on waste treatment and management.

The symposium on Biological Methods of Waste Treatment and Management in South India was organised by Dr. John Tharakan, Senior Fulbright Research Scholar, affiliated to the Department of Biotechnology of The New College and Dr. Sultan Ismail, Professor and Head of the Department.

Dr. Ismail welcomed the delegates and Dr. Tharakan made a brief presentation on the concept of the symposium. The Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Howard University, Washington DC said his research project in India was focussed on the documentation and assessment of biological technologies for the management and treatment of wastes and pollution in South India. "Chennai itself has a serious waste disposal problem," he said. Both incineration and land filling do not address the real problem of eliminating the waste itself, he said.

The symposium had over 30 papers and 17 oral presentations and 12 poster presentations.

The paper on `Biological Methods of Waste Management and Treatment,' by John Tharakan and Sultan Ismail documented biological technologies in use for pollution control and environmental remediation, evaluation of the success of such technologies and evaluation of novel biological pollution control and environmental clean-up technologies.

A paper was presented by Ramani Narayan and Sunder Balakrishnan of Harita NTI on drivers for biodegradable and compostable plastics and role of composting in waste management and sustainable agriculture.

Unexplored scope

Lucas Dengel of Auro Annam at Auroville made a presentation on the achievements and unexplored scope of effective microorganisms technology in India. Frederick Kaplan, Acting Consul General of the United States in Chennai participated in the inaugural function.

Self Help Group members from Poorivakkam in Tiruvallur District displayed organic manure made out of agricultural wastes in their village.

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