Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
focused on limiting emissions of undesirable materials through the use of
emission control technologies—the so-called end-of-pipe approach. Even
“pollution prevention” programs generally focus on relatively simple
adjustments of existing production technologies.Virtually all environmen-
tal regulation and management also focus on manufacturing, which is only
one life-cycle stage in a product's passage through the economy, and fre-
quently not the one generating the most significant environmental impact.
More fundamentally, service sectors, which account for about 60-70 per-
cent of most developed countries' economies and in many cases offer the
potential for discontinuous improvements in environmental performance
across the economy as a whole, are virtually invisible.
1
It is not so much a question of whether the current paradigm of envi-
ronmental regulation is working. Indeed, as implemented in most devel-
oped countries, it has demonstrably resulted in cleaner air and water, and
less toxic loading of the environment, and such emissions reduction initia-
tives are of unquestionable value in reducing environmental insults in many
developing countries.The question, rather, is whether the paradigm is ade-
quate to respond to the new information and data that have accumulated
since it was first developed, or whether it must, in turn, be subsumed into
a broader approach.The answer to this latter question is clearly yes.The ad
hoc focus on symptoms of economic activity—specific media impacts, or
waste sites—is augmented and made more efficient, not replaced, by a far
more comprehensive approach which focuses on production and con-
sumption patterns throughout the economy.
Table 1 compares the prevailing “overhead paradigm” and the evolving
industrial ecology paradigm. To begin with, the risks that each approach
addresses are profoundly different in both scale and complexity. Remedia-
tion and compliance aim at the reduction of localized risks, often defined
only in terms of human risk, while industrial ecology addresses not only
those, but also the environmental perturbations threatening sustainability,
such as loss of biodiversity, global climate change, stratospheric ozone
depletion, and global degradation of water, soil, and air resources. Mitigat-
ing the latter requires fundamental changes in technology and in economic
and cultural behavior, not just the establishment of a fund to support
cleanups. Reflecting the greater complexity, the disciplines involved in the
traditional environmental approach are relatively limited, and as reduction-
ist as environmental science allows. With industrial ecology, on the other
hand, a far broader and more integrative knowledge base is required: in par-
