History

Vaniyambadi is an industrial town in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the important leather tanning centers of India. There are about 131 tanneries operating in this town. To treat the effluent from these tanneries, a common effluent treatment plants was planned. A company "Vaniyambadi Talco environmental control system Ltd" was formed in 1986 by active tanners who are its members. The company is registered under the Indian Companies Act and managed by a Board of Directors, drawn from its members.

Tanneries form an intermediate segment of the leather industry. They get hides and skins from the animal husbandry sector and sell tanned leather to down stream units for manufacture of footwear and leather products. The Government of India reserved many tanning operations and production of certain leather products to small scale sector in order to achieve the goals of employment generation and decentralized pattern of development. Realizing the export potential of the leather industry, the Government of India initiated since 1974 a number of policy measures to boost the export of value added leather products. These policies led the rapid growth of the industry. With the rapid growth of tanneries, the adoption of chrome tanning process by the most tanners and the continued discharge of untreated effluent into land and water bodies, the pollution loads increased manifold.

With domestic growing awareness about environmental damages resulting from the discharges of untreated effluents by the tanneries into streams and rivers, the industry started to face two main challenges externally - ban or impositions of countervailing duty in case of non-compliance of environmental standards and keen competitions from China and south-east and south-Asian countries. The small tanner from the town had to choose CETP from the available options of closure, relocation, ETP and CETP.

Few wise and traditional tanners envisage an ample scope for transforming the CETP into dynamics and self efficient social organization to achieve development with improved environmental quality. This was a challenge and an opportunity as well. �Particularly janab P. Khaleelur Rahman Sahib, worth mentioning in the early eighties took initiations to encourage and instigate the tanners - who at first were dubious of the technology and the untested path of CETP, and successfully brought them to gather under this banner and assured them that, the required goals can be achieved if the changes are initiated and adopted.