Industrialization has brought us the benefits of a comfortable modern lifestyle: health giving pharmaceuticals, labour-saving household appliances, automobiles and ships, paints and detergents, synthetic fibres and polythene packaging, personal computers and TVs, just to name a few out of an endless list of manufactured goods. However, behind the luxury and convenience of modern living lies the real price of this industrial production: the generation of hundreds of million tonnes of hazardous waste every year.

The health of the environment has today become a major concern around the globe. Governments, eco-friendly groups and even individuals are banding together to address the issue. Just as children depend on their parents for shelter and sustainability, mankind depends on the environment to sustain their lives. . Wastes that too often pour out of smokestacks and outtake pipes, lie abandoned in dumps or leaky storage drums, or are shipped off illegally to distant places, exposing local communities to great dangers.