Eco-friendly Management of Tannery Solid Wastes in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh has the potential of developing leather industries due to having quality raw materials (hides and skins) and cheapest laborer market. But still no new entrepreneurs are attracted to set up new leather industries here because of generating huge amount of untreated pollutants from tannery and no one wants to bear the environmental risks of this country. Accordingly, generation, existing management system and impact assessment along with possible utilization of the tannery solid wastes as value added products were considered for investigations. The existing management system of tannery solid wastes and its consequences were investigated through field survey with structured and unstructured questionnaire; the tannery workers, technologists, officials were interviewed during 2009-2011. The maximum amount of solid wastes generated was measured in the peak season (October-December) in the year 2011 through developed formula and found 443 metric ton solid wastes were generated in a day from tannery at Hazaribagh, Dhaka. It was also observed that 90% of the trimmers, (tannery workers) were directly affected by those solid wastes, the surrounding environment became polluted and soil of dumping ground was contaminated with organic carbon (7.97% ±0.170), organic matter (13.70% ±0.292), TKN (1.54% ±0.137), Chloride (0.247% ±0.0284) and Chromium (2.28 ±0.0291). The manufacturing of Animal glue through appropriate utilization of more solid wastes, was targeted as a tool of tannery waste management. Its traditional glue manufacturing process was modified for producing animal glue from fleshings and pickle cuttings mixing with raw trimmings which imparted better physical and chemical properties in comparison to the sample glue collected from local market manufactured following traditional method. The main target of this research had to enhance the efficacy of by-product industry through process modification and integrating with the main industry so that the solid wastes generated from tannery need not to be dumped and used at the point of origin triggered to the eco-friendly environment. The findings of this work along with the findings of the previous researchers created a hope for further progress in research in the field of leather technology and its eco-friendly environmental management.