Recycling and Reuse of Ayurvedic Pharma Industry Wastes

Ayurvedic medicines are of great importance to the health of individuals. The global market for herbal drugs are growing rapidly due to their less or no side effects, cost-effectiveness, availability, better patient tolerance, and clinical effectiveness. The traditional ayurvedic medicine manufacturing systems combine with the elements of modern technology to improve the production of reasonable drugs for human health care. Globally, ayurvedic pharma industries are among the leading pharmaceutical industries and they generate large volume of biodegradable wastewater, solid waste, and oil waste during processing and production. The waste from herbal pharmaceutical industry is a complex constitute of plant extracts, plant parts, toxic solutes, and heavy metal ions. They also have high BOD and COD concentrations so they can be discharged only after proper treatment otherwise may lead to environmental problems. Integrated microbial-vermifiltration, vermicomposting, and windrow composting are some of the cost-effective methods for the recycling of solid waste from herbal pharmaceutical industry. Microalgae are used for the treatment of waste water due to their potential to reduce the metal contamination and remove toxic substances. The resultant water after the treatment was clean enough to be reused for irrigation process. Biopharmaceutical oil waste and solid waste can be used also as substrate for fermentation process as well as for isolation of beneficial fungal strains for enzyme production.