Treating water like the resource it is: Interview with Amit Badlani of Vihaan Clean and Green Tech

As water stress tightens across India's industrial heartland and regulatory pressure mounts, shared environmental infrastructure is emerging as the pragmatic answer. Amit Badlani, managing director of Vihaan Clean and Green Tech and Go Green Mechanisms, explains how a pioneering Common Effluent Treatment Plant in Gujarat is rewriting the rules for food and packaging clusters.

The compliance challenge

The compliance gap in India's industrial sector is well-documented, but the underlying reasons are less often discussed. “Many industries want to fulfil their regulatory obligations,” says Badlani, “but they consistently encounter challenges related to complexity and cost.” Environmental regulations are tightening at a time when many SMEs are least equipped to respond individually. His answer — shared infrastructure — is not a new concept, but the scale and integration of what Vihaan has built at Mehsana, Gujarat, is a different proposition entirely.

The facility, positioned behind the Fanidhar Mega Food Park, is a 10 MLD Common Effluent Treatment Plant built to serve multiple food processing industries simultaneously. It operates on Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) principles, treating wastewater to IS 10500 drinking water standards before recycling it back into the system. The logic of the shared model, Badlani explains, is straightforward: “A common facility provides economies of scale by reducing capital and operational costs for participating companies. It also allows access to advanced treatment technologies that many SMEs may find challenging to implement on their own.” Centralised monitoring, he adds, improves both process control and regulatory oversight in ways that fragmented, factory-by-factory systems cannot match.

“Shared infrastructure reduces duplication of land, workforce, energy use and equipment, creating a more sustainable industrial ecosystem than stand-alone compliance efforts.”

The water question

For food processing and packaging specifically, the sustainability pressures are acute. Badlani is direct about the scale of the challenge: excessive use of freshwater resources, rising effluent treatment costs and persistent difficulties in managing organic waste are compounded by energy costs, carbon reduction targets and the shift towards more recyclable packaging materials.

“As consumer expectations and export market requirements become increasingly stringent,” he says, “the greatest challenge for food manufacturers will be finding a balance between food safety, operational efficiency and environmental performance, while remaining competitive.”

Water scarcity gives the issue particular urgency in North Gujarat. “Recycling wastewater is moving from being an option to becoming a necessity for industries,” Badlani says. “Supporting future industrial growth solely through freshwater extraction is not an option in many regions experiencing high levels of water stress.”

Vihaan’s ZLD system is a direct response to that reality, treating and recycling effluent on-site, reducing freshwater withdrawal and strengthening long-term water security for the cluster it serves. On the wider question of ZLD feasibility, Badlani is measured. The technology is proven; the economics are often the constraint, particularly for individual facilities. But the cluster model shifts that calculation.

“As technology costs decline and efficiency improves, the economic viability of ZLD will continue to increase,” he says. “In the face of increasing water scarcity, ZLD may become a strategic solution for securing future water supplies.”

Steam, symbiosis and shared utilities

Alongside the CETP, Vihaan has integrated a centralised steam-generation system — currently operating at 40 TPH, with a second phase of 60 TPH planned — supplying high-pressure process steam directly to food industries in the cluster.

The environmental and operational logic mirrors that of the water treatment plant. “By establishing larger shared systems, it is possible to achieve higher boiler efficiencies, lower total fuel consumption and reduced emissions compared to multiple smaller, independently operated units,” Badlani explains.

The elimination of individual factory boilers, fuel tanks, chimneys and pollution-control systems reduces both capital expenditure and the number of emission points requiring regulatory oversight, allowing manufacturers to focus on food production. A centralised infrastructure also makes it easier to introduce cleaner fuels and future low-carbon technologies across the entire cluster, rather than implementing change factory by factory.

“Water security will be a critical issue linked to business continuity. Companies that build strong recycling infrastructure today will be better equipped to manage future resource constraints.”

Compliance goes digital

Real-time monitoring and automation are changing the nature of compliance itself.

“Compliance is shifting from a reactive management function to a proactive one,” Badlani says. Continuous monitoring means deviations can be identified early, reducing both compliance risks and environmental impact. Data analytics improve operational efficiency, while consolidated dashboards provide regulators and operators with a transparent, unified view of performance.

Looking ahead, he sees AI-driven predictive analytics as the next step: further optimisation, greater consistency and a new benchmark for environmental performance at scale.

The infrastructure India needs

Asked what environmental infrastructure Indian industrial clusters will require to balance manufacturing growth with sustainability goals, Badlani's answer is integrative.

“Integrated environmental infrastructure combining CETPs, water recycling and common utility systems, renewable energy systems and resource recovery facilities should be developed for Indian industrial clusters,” he says.

Digital environmental monitoring networks, waste-to-energy and biogas plants, and carbon-management systems all have a role to play. Public-private partnerships, he argues, will be critical to deploying this infrastructure at speed and scale.

The shift in thinking he advocates is perhaps the most significant point of all: “Sustainability must be viewed as a core component of industrial infrastructure that supports long-term competitiveness and growth, rather than simply a compliance requirement.”

About Amit Badlani

Amit Badlani is an environmentalist, chemical engineer and sustainability professional with more than 23 years of experience in environmental engineering, pollution control and regulatory compliance. He is founder and managing director of Go Green Mechanisms, an MoEF-recognised and ISO 17025-accredited environmental consulting and testing laboratory, and Eonair Technologies, an NABL-aligned calibration laboratory. As managing director of Vihaan Clean and Green Tech, he has led the development of a 10 MLD CETP with an integrated 100 TPH common steam-generation facility designed to support food and agro-industrial clusters in Gujarat.