Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(Turnbull and Bevan, 1995), waste generation and land take. Moreover, in the UK
increases in the emissions of surface transport to airports may contribute to exceed-
ing statutory air quality standards (Maughan and Raper, 2000). Several European
airports already apply charges to aircraft gaseous emissions as a means of influencing
air quality and noise impacts.
D
ISTINGUISHING
ECO
-
EFFICIENCY
AND
SUSTAINABILITY
In the UK, a government (pre-legislative) White Paper on air transport aims to
establish a framework that will ensure that the long-term development of aviation in
the UK is sustainable (DETR, 2000a). This topic covers two aspects of the associated
debate. On one hand are themes of environmental efficiency and mitigation, in the
sense of reducing environmental impact per unit of business performance - the lat-
ter, in this case, primarily being the number of people transported by air (though
different parts of the aviation industry have differing, if related, business priorities).
It is on this side of the debate that there is most common ground among the differ-
ent constituents of the aviation industry, its consultants, regulators and NGOs. At
the most general level, this side of the debate concerns 'doing more with less' (DETR,
1999) and echoes the injunctions for materials and energy efficiency of Factor 4 and
beyond by von Weizsäcker et al (1998). Related to this are arguments for a more ser-
vice-based, closed-loop economy motivated by capitalist ethics, exemplified in the
natural capitalism espoused by Hawken et al (2000) and forming part of the rheto-
ric and substance of the Natural Step message (Robèrt et al, 1997; Natrass and
Altomare, 1999).
Mitigation of the types of local environmental impact discussed by Callum
Thomas and Martin Lever in Chapter 6 and the health impacts of aviation discussed
by Ken Hume and Adrian Watson in Chapter 4 - impacts which form the most obvi-
ous downside of the socio-economic benefits discussed by Robert Caves in Chapter
3 - are likely to involve relatively consensual, site-specific enhancements of environ-
mental efficiency. Reductions or stasis in the ambient noise around an airport, for
example, may obviously be achieved through quieter aircraft. Technological advances
may obviate the much more contentious option of fewer aircraft. If the number of
aircraft rises - as it has generally - but noise is constant or reduced, this constitutes
an environmental efficiency gain in terms of the specific indicator of near-airport
noise. Many of the chapters and some of the commentaries in the topic refer to
environmental efficiency or mitigation of such localized impacts near or at airports:
for example, Chapters 4 and 6 referred to above, the commentary on potential effi-
ciency improvements to air traffic management by Arthur Lieuwen and Ted Elliff of
EUROCONTROL in Chapter 12, the commentary on airline initiatives by Hugh
Somerville in Chapter 12, and Chapter 9 on air freight and the implications of just-
in-time
logistics by David Gillingwater, Ian Humphreys and Robert Watson. Simi-
larly, corporate environmental management as discussed in Chapter 7 by Paul Hooper,
Bridget Heath and Janet Maughan is likely to lead to reductions in materials usage
and waste production per unit of business output at an airport site or with respect to
an airline's corporate boundary.
