WASTE MANAGEMENT COGNIZANCE IN KNITWEAR UNITS OFLUDHIANAKIRANJOT KAUR, SAROJ YADAV, NEELAM M. ROSEAND DIKSHA BISHTAbstract The increasing pace of industrial development has created concerns for the environmental issues.Knitting industry has been characterized as one of the highly polluting industries generating ahuge amount of waste that creates various environmental problems and hazards. The presentstudy was effectuated to study the different types of waste generation and waste utilizationpractices followed by the knitting units of Ludhiana. An exploratory survey of ten knitting unitswas conducted using a self structured interview schedule. It was noted that majority of the unitswere established during 1999 to 2009 with an initial investment of 90-95 lakhs and were having anannual turnover upto 15 crores. Total 2305 employees were employed in the selected knittingunits, out of which 1233 were skilled workers, 751 were semi-skilled workers, 271 were unskilledworkers, 30 were supervisors and 20 were managers. The waste hosiery fabrics were generated inthe form of surplus fabric after order completion, fabric roll end waste and fabric with cuts or tornfabric (50%). In cutting and stitching sections, waste was mainly generated due to cutting left oversand thread waste (50% each). All the ten selected units sell the waste fabrics to rag collectors, fiveunits to retailers and three units to shoddy industries. It was also reported that four units eitherdispose offor burn thewaste to get rid of it. The major problem faced for proper utilization ofwaste fabrics was lack of designing knowledge (80%) followed by shortage of time (70%) andinadequate skills (60%). |