Feature

Keeping the Development Green

Muhammad Eusha

WHILE Dhaka has rather ignominiously secured a place in the list of most polluted cities around the world and the government is struggling in its strive to restore the city to a more habitable condition, few of the industries, who are chiefly to blame for the present situation, have been cooperating to alleviate the plight. Out of those few, one surely has been Renata Limited, where I was sent from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) on an industrial training. I had the opportunity to witness how there are still some souls in this heartless city who care about the green while pursuing excellence in business boosting the economy of the country.

Every possible form of pollution is conspicuously present in Dhaka. One just has to take a glimpse of the color of the water bodies in and around the city to comprehend the magnitude of negligence shown to the environmental issues in the recent decades that has resulted in such horrific sights. The persistent nonchalance of the authorities persuades one to believe that they are ignorant of the fact that sooner or later, the pollution is going to, if it already has not, endanger lives of no one but us. Industries around the country are, only with a few exceptions, audaciously refusing to conform to the standards and codes set by the government to ensure a green environment. As the country moves forward and the growth in the industrial sector is more promising than ever, it is now incumbent upon the industrialists that they display a provident approach to development and improvement without impairing the environment.

I had a month-long training at Renata Limited, a prominent medicine manufacturer in the country. During my stay, I had the responsibility of observing and studying manufacturing processes in order to gain practical work experience. One of the very first things one observes about Renata's chief manufacturing plant in Mirpur is that it is green. Trees have not been considered a nuisance and the existing design has been tolerant and sympathetic to the existence of our leafy friends!

The canteen located inside the campus is probably a good example, which illustrates my statement. The plan of the building is rather unconventional; the walls have turned to avoid interfering trees and at places, you can practically see trunks of trees inside the canteen protruding from the roof. The planning engineers in Renata stated they were motivated by the Managing Director, Kaiser Kabir, who was an avid lover of trees and despised any design which involved sacrificing any of them.

Like all other industries, especially those pharmaceutical, Renata is liable to treat its effluent before it is discharged in to the environment as it is regarded as highly hazardous and injurious to the environment. Despite the existence of stringent government laws, it is sad that they are humiliatingly ineffectual as the enforcement of such regulations invariably has been a field of failure. I noticed that Renata, unlike many other pharmaceutical industries, has set up an Effluent Treatment Plant which is not superficial but truly operational bearing the sign that the management is conscious of their responsibility to the environment irrespective of the government's success or failure to enforce laws effectively. The reader only has to consider the present condition of many rivers around the city to fully realize the consequences of not treating industrial effluent properly and this will help him or her appreciate Renata's operational policies emphasizing on the environmental issues greatly. I was also excited and surprised to learn that the plant was designed by chemical engineers from BUET working for Renata while most others would not even dream of accomplishing it without hiring consultants from abroad. Being a student of BUET, I was greatly motivated by it.

Future in Renata is also green. Razib Hasan, another chemical engineer from BUET, now the Head of Projects at Renata, told me that the ongoing expansion process of the company regarded the environmental issues with great importance. The planning and design of future growth are always developed keeping in mind the ever-growing responsibility of the human society to the environment.