In many ways, the transition from management and control approaches to prevention has been gradual; An evolution instead of a revolution. Regulatory requirements and good engineering practices will continue to require better approaches in both areas. Control technologies and pollution prevention are not separate efforts. In fact, the life cycle view prohibits such dichotomies. Both are crucial tools in ecological design. Progress towards sustainability and beyond, such as renewable materials and technologies, will continue. By focusing on function and eliminating inefficiencies, we can expect even better results. Engineers and other designers are committed to continuous improvement and overall quality. As a result, regeneration strategies for design, manufacture, use and reuse are increasingly being adopted. Process changes typically require the largest investment in human and financial resources and can lead to most rewards.
For example, using wash water meters instead of a single batch operation can significantly reduce the amount of wash water that needs to be treated. However, such a change requires new and diverted pipes, pipes and valves. All of this requires a new process protocol. In industries where materials are immersed in solutions, such as metal coating, the use of extraction tanks as an intermediate step has resulted in savings in the electroplating solution and reduced waste. The benefits of pollution prevention and environmental sustainability include not only cost savings and regulatory compliance, but also improved working conditions for employees, competitive benefits for environmentally conscious customers and consumers, and improved relationships between communities and regulators. Identify the materials with the highest volume (these are often diluents such as water, air, carrier gas or solvent), as these materials or diluents often control the capital and operating costs associated with end-of-chain treatment of waste streams. Determine the sources of these diluents in the process. Second, develop pollution prevention options to reduce volume. Pollution prevention works best in the context of an EMS.
In fact, P2 was to become an integral part of the EMS, as opposed to a stand-alone program implemented by a group of engineers. Too often, management views P2 as a set of long-term activities that can bring additional benefits and improvements. In fact, P2 may start this way, but when adopted in a macro sense throughout the enterprise, its impact can be much more dramatic. We argue that if companies had practiced pollution prevention elements 30 years ago, Superfund locations would probably not exist today. Third-party liabilities arising from off-site property damage and class action lawsuits are now and over the past 20 years the direct result of practices that not only ignored the fate and transportation characteristics of pollution, but simply did not focus on efficient manufacturing. Of course, we can argue that strict enforcement of environmental laws has led industry to understand that it must be accountable for how its activities interact with the environment and public safety, but from a business perspective, we must recognize that, in some cases, the cost of compliance has become excessive, so more effective approaches are needed. to maintain operations. Industry has always had an incentive to reduce waste-rich by-products. The thousands of tons of waste, used solvents and chemicals not complying with specifications stored in corrosive drums, saturated soils caused by careless spills and landfills, the infiltration of this waste into groundwater that ultimately impacted the supply of drinking water in some parts of our country, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on fines, penalties, litigation due to off-site property damage caused by Not to mention the site remediation efforts that have been made in some plants for decades – all reasons to invest in pollution prevention and cleaner production.
Pollution prevention approaches can be applied to all potential and actual pollution activities, including those in the energy, agriculture, federal, consumer and industrial sectors. Prevention practices are essential to conserve wetlands, groundwater sources and other critical ecosystems – areas where we particularly want to stop pollution before it starts. Treatment. In the absence of feasible prevention and recovery, pollution should be treated in accordance with applicable standards before discharge or transfer. Keep in mind that strictly enforcing the procedures and practices described for P2 and EMS is not important. Successful programs must be flexible and tailored to the specific needs of the business. The goal should not be to restructure your entire company, but to integrate specific tools and refocus priorities so that the profitability of operations benefits from better environmental performance. Prevention. The priority of waste management is to prevent or reduce pollution at source as far as possible. In the energy sector, pollution prevention can reduce environmental damage through the extraction, processing, transportation and combustion of fuels. In the United States, the Pollution Prevention Act (which went into effect in 1990 – similar laws are in force in many other countries) required the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program to reduce sources and draw industry, government and public attention to reducing pollution caused by low-cost production changes. Operation and consumption of raw materials.
Often, opportunities to reduce sources are not realized because existing regulations and the industrial resources required to comply with them are focused on treatment and disposal. Source reduction is fundamentally different and more desirable than waste management or environmental protection. Since pollution prevention is always a primary objective of any waste management program, waste sampling programs should always be designed to identify sites in an industrial treatment plant that generate significant amounts of waste.