Environmental Biotechnology: For Sustainable Future

Abstract

Environmental biotechnology is the integration of scientific and engineering knowledge that is employed to remediate and restore the degraded environment. Together with the setting of standards for industry and enforcement of compliance and the implementation of legislation for environmental protection, environmental biotechnology gained importance and broadness in the 1980s. Environmental biotechnology is not a new area of science. It is there for generations, and we are quite familiar with some old technologies like wastewater treatment, compositing, etc. Basically, its origin is from chemical engineering but with the advancement of time other branches of science like biochemistry, environmental microbiology, molecular biology, environmental engineering contributed to its advancement. Since rapid industrialization, urbanization, and other developments have resulted in a threatened clean environment and depleted natural resources. Higher consumer demand and high standard of living have amplified pollution of air with harmful gases, water bodies with hazardous industrial discharges, and soil with the use of pesticides and use of non-biodegradable products. Some of these pollutants can readily be degraded or be removed by using different approaches, but unfortunately, some environmental contaminants are resistant to a process or stimulus and can accumulate in the environment. Furthermore, the treatment of some pollutants by conventional methods, such as chemical degradation, incineration, or landfilling, can generate other contaminants, which superimposed on the large variety of noxious waste present in the environment and determine increasing consideration to be placed on the development of combination with alternative, economical, and reliable biological treatments. This chapter focuses on the biotechnological approaches with special reference to environmental biotechnology used to combat different environmental pollution. Some new approaches to rejuvenate the degraded environment, future prospects, and new developments for sustainable future are also discussed.