Guidelines and legislation for dye house effluents

Increasing attention has been paid over the years to the environmental problems related to industrial activities. Environmental standards have been established and control organisms have been created with a view to applying restrictive legislation. In the dyeing industry, ennoblers discharge in the environment large volumes of strongly coloured effluents that are heavily loaded with pollutants and highly concentrated in salts. This chemical load is generated during the different steps of textile preparation. After reviewing the characteristics of these effluents, this paper gives a comparative review of the current legislations on the dyeing industry emissions. It examines more closely the discharge legislation, first in France and then in other countries around the world. A comparison of the six most representative parameters shows how different the applied constraints are in different countries.