Archive for the
‘Environment’ Category

With the rise in urbanization and growing population, it is challenging to manage the overburden of overcrowded cities, and extensive air and water pollution while meeting the overgrowing demands for food, clothing, and shelter using tremendous resources for everyone. We must strive to take care of the environment during such times by opting for sustainable practices.

With the increased requirement for food supply, biostimulants have become one of the most commonly used stimulants in the agriculture industry. With their recent popularity, traditional stimulants such as fertilizers and pesticides can be easily replaced due to the biostimulant’s unique method of influencing growth and development in more than one way. Compared to traditional fertilizers, Biostimulants offer much more potential growth by improving yields and crop quality.

The agriculture sector has been facing significant challenges of low productivity in plants due to human activities. As the world’s population grows, requirements for food also increase exponentially. Still, the pressure of climate change, water and wind erosion, salinity, loss of organic matter, environmental pollution, disease-spreading pests and abiotic stress has led to the loss of crop productivity. Biostimulants’ are novel approaches that focus on stimulating plant nutrition processes by improving one or more of the characteristics of the plant, such as nutrient use efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress, quality traits, availability of confined nutrients in the soil.

Removal of excess crop material is an integral part of the agricultural system worldwide as it is essential to prepare the soil for new seeds and enables better weed and pest control. In India, rice harvesting is about to begin in different regions such as Punjab and Haryana, and farmers are engaged in managing the rice straw or stubble.

Every year, farmers generally choose the stubble burning method to clear the crop residue as it is less expensive and less labour-intensive, eventually leading to rising air pollution levels in the region. However, better agro-waste management and sustainable farming practices can help in overcoming this challenge.

A conventional septic tank system performs the important function of holding and treating raw wastewater. Millions of living microorganisms, naturally present in the septic tank, play an important role in the decomposition of organic solid waste. After being acted upon by microbes, the effluent is dispersed into a soil leaching field to be treated further. Finally, the treated effluent is released into the environment. However, extensive usage of chemicals at home can affect the natural enzymes in the septic tank

A high percentage of the population in India do not have access to proper toilet infrastructure due to unaffordable cost, additional space required and the need for frequent fecal waste removal. Biodigester based mobile toilets, due to their compact size, can be installed at geographical terrains where conventional toilets can’t be used.

The microorganisms in aerobic systems perform their function in the presence of oxygen, whereas in anaerobic systems, the decomposition process is carried out by microbes in the absence of it. Read on to find out more about aerobic and anaerobic treatment technologies, origins, differences, advantages and disadvantages and much more. 

Waste can be defined as discarded and useless materials which do not possess any value. Solid waste is generated from different sources such as households, industries, agriculture, commercial spaces and other human activities, and pose significant environmental and public health risks. Thus, effective solid waste management is a necessity.

As per UNICEF, solid waste is categorized into two: Biodegradable and Non-Biodegradable waste. Biodegradable waste includes kitchen waste, agricultural waste, human and animal waste, which can be decomposed by the biological action of living microorganisms. However, non-biodegradable wastes are those which cannot be decomposed biologically. It includes plastic, metal, glass etc. This is the reason why non-biodegradable waste management using different technologies and solutions have assumed greater importance today.

A vast quantity of wastewater is generated every day from households, commercial establishments, and industrial settings. Treating organic waste present in the sewage can be challenging as physical and chemical mediums are not quite effective. Thus, biological sewage water treatment processes are generally used to meet effluent standards set.

However, due to the ever-increasing population, urbanization and industrialization, the performance of treatment plants are affected. Moreover, there are stringent local and national regulations to release the effluent into the environment and to protect public health. MBBR technology is an advanced wastewater technology that can be used to optimize the sewage treatment plants and boost their efficiency while keeping the costs low.