Biotechnology has made tremendous progress in the last twenty years. Now-a-days it is controlling environmental pollution and the current approaches include both minimisation of industrial waste by substituting the waste generating steps by biotechnological steps, and cleaning up of general pollution when this became inevitable. This was stated by N Manickam of ITRC while delivering a special lecture on "Principles of biotechnology and its role on elimination of toxic wastes' at the Lucknow Public Collegiate's Sharda Nagar branch.