Environmental Rehabilitation of Industrial Waste Dumping Site

Abstract

Indiscriminate and careless disposal of urban and industrial waste results in a profuse accumulation of toxic contaminants, significantly causing soil, air, and water pollution globally. Different industries, including textile dye, tannery, paper, sugar mill, rubber, and petroleum, discharge solid wastes, effluents with organics, heavy metals, and toxins, and gaseous pollutants abundantly that adversely affect the ecosystem. Solid wastes generated by industries are inadvertently disposed in open landfills and nonengineered dumping sites with little to no waste separation, restricting resource recovery and recycling prospects. Compared to traditional remediation techniques, a new and improved avenue of remediation mediated by biological sources like plants, bacteria, fungus, mycorrhiza, algae, nanobioparticles, and immobilized bioenzymes, is gradually gaining prominence as a result of explicit scientific experiments and social concern. The main principle behind improvising those conventional techniques is to establish a nature-friendly, cost-affordable, and sustainable process. The mechanisms by which this bio-based remediation works are stress tolerance, bioaccumulation, bioaugmentation, stress avoidance, and biostimulation. Despite having some demerits, like the chance of secondary infection and contamination from some microbes in the bioremediation process, its numerous benefits and greener prospects are overpowering and gradually making this process ideal for rehabilitating polluted environments.