Environment and Waste Management in Metallurgical Industries - Role of databases

Metallurgical industries are responsible for all kinds of pollutants, solid, liquid and gaseous. Due to various technology development efforts towards their abatement, significant quantum of wastes is now being re-cycled and pollutants contained within permissible norms. However, intelligent environment decisions require a comprehensive information base. This paper explains the complexity of
setting up databases in environmental and waste management. It also mentions some of the prominent databases available world-wide and in India. Two major
initiatives in India on environment databases i.e. ENVIS and TIFACLINE have been described. There is a good potential for India to become a global player in this area.