Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1

every part reusable or recyclable for easy remanufacturingshould eventually save the company $1 billion inmanufacturing costs.Fifth, design products to last longer. Today’s tireshave an average life of 97,000 kilometers (60,000miles). Researchers believe this use could be extendedto at least 160,000 kilometers (100,000 miles).Sixth, eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging.From an environmental standpoint, the preferred hierarchyfor packaging is no packaging (nude products),minimal packaging, reusable packaging, and recyclable packaging.Canada has set a goal of using the first three ofthese packaging priorities to cut excess packaging inhalf. Here are some key questions for designers, manufacturers,and consumers to ask about packaging: Is itnecessary? Can it use fewer materials? Can it be reused?Are the resources that went into it renewable? Does itcontain the highest feasible amount of recycled material?Can it be biodegraded into harmless nutrients thatare recycled in the earth’s natural chemical cycles? Is itdesigned to be recycled easily? Can it be incineratedwithout producing harmful air pollutants or a toxicash? Can it be buried and decomposed in a landfillwithout producing chemicals that can contaminategroundwater?Figure 24-4 lists some ways you can reduce youroutput of solid waste.Improvements in resource productivity and environmentaldesign are very important. But we can domuch better through a new resource productivityWhat Can You Do?Solid Waste• Follow the four R's of resource use: Refuse, Reduce,Reuse, and Recycle.• Ask yourself whether you relly need a particular item.• Rent, borrow, or barter goods and services when you can.• Buy things that are reusable, recyclable, or compostable,and be sure to reuse, recycle, and compost them.• Do not use throwaway paper and plastic plates, cups,and eating utensils, and other disposable items whenreusable or refillable versions are available.• Use e-mail in place of conventional paper mail.• Read newspapers and magazines online.• Buy products in concentrated form whenever possible.Figure 24-4 What can you do? Ways to reduce your output ofsolid waste.revolution. In their 1999 book Natural Capitalism, PaulHawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins contendthat we have the knowledge and technology to greatlyincrease resource productivity by getting 75–90% morework or service from each unit of material resourceswe use. To these analysts, the only major obstacles tosuch an economic and ecological revolution are laws,policies, taxes, and subsidies that continue to rewardinefficient resource use and fail to reward efficient resourceuse. There are many fulfilling career choices forpeople wanting to become part of the resource productivityrevolution.24-3 THE ECOINDUSTRIALREVOLUTION AND SELLING SERVICESINSTEAD OF THINGSWhat Is the Ecoindustrial Revolution?Reducing Waste Production by CopyingNatureWe can make industrial manufacturing processesmore sustainable by redesigning them to mimic hownature deals with wastes.There are growing signs that a new ecoindustrial revolutionwill take place over the next 50 years. The goal isto make industrial manufacturing processes cleanerand more sustainable by redesigning them to mimichow nature deals with wastes. Recall that in nature thewaste outputs of one organism become the nutrient inputsof another organism, so all of the earth’s nutrientsare endlessly recycled.One way we can mimic nature is to recycle andreuse most chemicals used in industries instead ofdumping them into the environment. Another is tohave industries interact in complex resource exchangewebs where the wastes of one manufacturer becomeraw materials for another—similar to food webs innatural ecosystems (Figure 4-19, p. 69). This is happeningin Kalundborg, Denmark, where an electric powerplant and a number of nearby industries, farms, andhomes work together to save money and reduce theiroutputs of waste and pollution. They do this by exchangingwaste outputs and thus converting them intoresources, as shown in Figure 24-5. Trace the connectionsin this diagram.Today there are about 20 ecoindustrial parks similarto the one in Kalundborg in various parts of theworld and more are being built or planned. Some arebeing developed on abandoned industrial sites, calledbrownfields, which are cleaned up and redeveloped.In Europe at least one-third of all industrial wastesare sent to waste-material exchanges or clearinghouseswhere they are sold or given away as raw materials forother industries. About a tenth of the industrial waste536 CHAPTER 24 Solid and Hazardous Waste