Industries in India, like industries anywhere else in the world generate a variety of wastes in large quantities. These wastes may be solid, liquid or gaseous. Industry-wise quantities are not accurately known in many cases. While, the large and medium industries do respond to environmental compulsions as imposed by the pollution control laws, particularly the water and air Acts, the small scale units do virtually nothing to clean-up their waste waters or air emissions.

However, the solid wastes, whether generated in the manufacturing processes in small-scale units or in large or medium industries, are dumped indiscriminately wherever convenient and cheap.

It is estimated that small-scale units put together generate as much wastes as the large and medium industries in the country. And the entire amount is discharged almost without any treatment with very little regard to the environmentally safe disposal practice. The result is increasingly polluted environment, which at places has already acquired serious proportions. The first casualty of waste discharge is our water sources, including the ground water. One such example is a city in Punjab, which is wholly dependent on ground water sources. Shows the difference in quality of water available in some of the city’s ground water sources and what it should be, if it has to be potable as per WHO drinking water standards.