University of KhartoumInstitute of Environmental

SciencesDip/ M.Sc in Environmental

SciencesSemester 2

ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION COURSE

By: Dr. Zeinab Osman Saeed

POLLUTION PREVENTION

Lecture No.9

POLLUTION PREVENTION

Pollution prevention (P2) describes activities that reduce the amount of pollution generated by a process, whether it is consumer consumption, driving, or industrial production

POLLUTION PREVENTION

In contrast to most pollution control strategies, which seek to manage a pollutant after it is formed and reduce its impact upon the environment, the pollution prevention approach seeks to increase the efficiency of a process, thereby reducing the amount of pollution generated at its source.

Although there is wide agreement that source reduction is the preferred strategy, some professionals also use the term pollution prevention to include recycling or reuse.

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is a broad philosophy and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements.

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is an attempt to balance relations between humanity and their broader organismic and biogeochemical milieu in such a way that all the components are accorded a proper degree of respect.

Environmentalism and environmental concerns are often represented by the color green

Green chemistry

Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is a philosophy of chemical research and engineering that encourages the design of products and processes that minimize the use and generation of hazardous substances.

Whereas environmental chemistry is the chemistry of the natural environment, and of pollutant chemicals in nature, green chemistry seeks to reduce and prevent pollution at its source.

Green chemistry -Principles

The 12 principles are:1.It is better to prevent waste than

to treat or clean up waste after it is formed.

2.Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product.

3.Wherever practicable, synthetic methodologies should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment.

4.Chemical products should be designed to preserve efficacy of function while reducing toxicity.

5.The use of auxiliary substances (e.g. solvents, separation agents, etc.) should be made unnecessary wherever possible and innocuous when used.

6.requirements should be recognized for their environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. Synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.

7.A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting wherever technically and economically practicable.

8.Reduce derivatives - Unnecessary derivatization (blocking group, protection/ deprotection, temporary modification) should be avoided whenever possible.

9.Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents.

10.Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function they do not persist in the environment and break down into innocuous degradation products.

11.Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow for real-time, in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous substances.

12.Substances and the form of a substance used in a chemical process should be chosen to minimize potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.

Cleaner production

Cleaner production is a preventive, company-specific environmental protection initiative.

It is intended to minimize waste and emissions and maximize product output.

By analysing the flow of materials and energy in a company, one tries to identify options to minimize waste and emissions out of industrial processes through source reduction strategies.

Examples for cleaner production options are:

Documentation of consumption (as a basic analysis of material and energy flows, e. g. with a Sankey diagram)

Use of indicators and controlling (to identify losses from poor planning, poor education and training, mistakes)

Substitution of raw materials and auxiliary materials (especially renewable materials and energy)

Increase of useful life of auxiliary materials and process liquids (by avoiding drag in, drag out, contamination)

Improved control and automatization

Reuse of waste (internal or external)

New, low waste processes and technologies

Source reduction

Source reduction refers to any change in the design, manufacture, purchase, or use of materials or products (including packaging) to reduce their amount or toxicity before they become municipal solid waste.

Pollution Prevention (or P2) and Toxics use reduction are also called source reduction because they address the use of hazardous substances at the source.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission stated:

"Source reduction" refers to reducing or lowering the weight, volume or toxicity of a product or package.

The Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Program (TURA) offers 6 strategies to achieve source reduction:

Toxic chemical substitution Production process modification Finished product reformulation Production modernization Improvements in operations and

maintenance In-process recycling of production material

Waste management concepts

Waste hierarchyExtended producer responsibility

Polluter pays principle

Waste Disposal Hierarchy

ReduceReuseRecycle

Waste Disposal Hierarchy

The waste hierarchy refers to the "3 Rs" reduce, reuse and recycle, which classify waste management strategies according to their desirability in terms of waste minimization.

Waste Disposal Hierarchy

The waste hierarchy remains the cornerstone of most waste minimization strategies.

The aim of the waste hierarchy is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to generate the minimum amount of waste.

Waste Disposal Hierarchy

Recycling

Recycling is processing used materials (waste) into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to virgin production

Recycling

Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, meta, plastic, textiles, and electronics.

Although similar in effect, the composting or other reuse of biodegradable waste – such as food or garden waste – is not typically considered recycling.

Recycling

In the strictest sense, recycling of a material would produce a fresh supply of the same material—for example, used office paper would be converted into new office paper.

However, this is often difficult or too expensive (compared with producing the same product from raw materials or other sources), so "recycling" of many products or materials involves their reuse in producing different materials (e.g., paperboard) instead

Recycling

Another form of recycling is the salvage of certain materials from complex products,

either due to their intrinsic value (e.g., lead from car batteries, or gold from computer components), or

due to their hazardous nature (e.g., removal and reuse of mercury from various items)

Extended producer responsibility

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a strategy designed to promote the integration of environmental costs associated with goods throughout their life cycles into the market price of the products

Extended producer responsibility-Definition

Also known as product stewardship, EPR uses financial incentives to encourage manufacturers to design environmentally-friendly products by holding producers liable for the costs of managing their products at end of life.

Extended producer responsibility

This tactic attempts to relieve local governments of the costs of managing certain priority products by forcing manufacturers to internalize the cost of recycling within the product price.

Extended producer responsibility

EPR promotes that producers (usually brand owners) have the greatest control over product design and marketing and therefore have the greatest ability and responsibility to reduce toxicity and waste

Extended producer responsibility

EPR may take the form of a reuse, buy-back, or recycling program, or in energy production from waste materials. The producer may also choose to delegate this responsibility to a third party, a so-called producer responsibility organization (PRO), which is paid by the producer for spent-product management.

Extended producer responsibility

A good example for producer responsibility organizations are the PRO EUROPE (PACKAGING RECOVERY ORGANISATION EUROPE), founded in 1995, the umbrella organisation for European packaging and packaging waste recovery and recycling schemes which set themselves the task of relieving industrial companies and commercial enterprises of their individual obligation to take back used sales packaging through the operation of a scheme which fulfils these obligations on a nation-wide basis on behalf of their member companies

Polluter pays principle

Polluter pays principle is a principle where the polluting party pays for the impact caused to the environment

With respect to waste management, this generally refers to the requirement for a waste generator to pay for appropriate disposal of the waste.

Pay as you throw

Pay as you throw (PAYT) (also called unit pricing, variable rate pricing, or user-pay) is a usage-pricing model for disposing of municipal solid waste. Users are charged a rate based on how much waste they present for collection to the municipality or local authority.

Rationale

The two most traditional approaches to disposing of municipal solid waste are a flat-rate system or municipal taxes.

All users pay the same municipal taxes regardless of how much waste they present for pickup.

Under the flat-rate system there is no link between “the actual costs for waste disposal and individual waste production,” so users do not consider the quantity of waste they produce.

PAYT is based on two guiding principles of environmental policy:

the polluter pays principle and

the shared responsibility concept.

Industrial ecology

Industrial Ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity.

Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function.

Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal.

Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences.

Industrial Ecology has been defined as a "systems-based, multidisciplinary discourse that seeks to understand emergent behaviour of complex integrated human/natural systems