59 % of the total consumption of water in the developed countries is destined to industrial use, 30 % to agricultural consumption and 11 % to domestic expense, as it is stated in the first report of United Nations on the development of the water resources of the world, Water for all, waters for the life (March, 2003). In 2025, the consumption of water destined for industrial use will reach the 1.170 km3 / year, number that in 1995 was placing in 752 km3 / year.
The producing sector not only is the one that more spends, also it is the one that more contaminates. This information contributes an idea of the importance that has the treatment and the reutilization of waste water in the industrial sector in the world.
The purification of the waste water is necessary to avoid a series of negative effects of pollution in the natural water courses. Some of these effects distinguish themselves later: ·
- Decrease of the quality of the water for the supply of the population or for industrial or agriculture use.
- Decrease of the water available resources.
- Alteration of the capacity of autopurification of the riverbeds recipients, with the consistent destruction of the flora and fauna that they live in them or in his proximities.
· Potential danger for the public health.
- negative effects on the fishing.
- atmospheric pollution (bad odors).
- Loss of ecological diversity in the aquatic systems.
The water is both a right and a responsibility, and has economic, social and environmental value. Every citizen, every company, has been aware that the sweet water of quality is a natural resource, increasingly scantily so much to superficial as underground, necessary level not only for the economic, but indispensable development as support of any form of life in the nature. It does not fit doubt that the industry is an engine of economic growth, and therefore, key of the social progress. Nevertheless, too often the need to maximize the productive process excludes from the planning the third leg of the progress, the protection of the Environment.
The suitable treatment of industrial waste water and its later reutilization to multiple uses contributes to a sustainable consumption of the water and to the environmental regeneration of the public hydraulic and maritime domain and of its ecosystems. Without forgetting that the quality water is a critical raw material for the industry.
The international community has recognized in multiple forums the important role that plays the water in a sustainable system of industrial long-term development. The Agenda 21, arisen from the conversations of Rio 92, concludes in the chapter 30 that the policies and commercial and industrial operations can play a role decisively in the environmental conservation and the maintenance of the resources if there is increased the efficiency of the processes of production and technologies and clean procedures to be adopted, reducing to the minimum, and even avoiding, the undone ones.
For its part, the Plan of Application of the Decisions of the World Summit on the Sustainable Development of 2002 breathes to the industry to develop its social function establishing systems of environmental arrangement, codes of conduct, measures of certification and publication of reports on environmental and social questions. One year later, the Ministerial Declaration of the Third World Forum of the Water assembled in Kyoto proposes to collect funds following criteria of cost recovery that they adapt to the climatic, environmental and social local conditions, as well as the beginning of: The ones who contaminates pays.
