Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Companies' environmental management plays a role in managing risks associated
with the production and the whole life cycle of products including their manufacture,
use and the waste phase, manifested in the forms of abrasion, controlled or illegal
waste disposal or industrially contaminated land.
Companies' management tasks are well defined, relevant for a delineated part of
the environment, and a specially designed industrial, mining or agricultural technol-
ogy or activity with clearly identified sources, dangers and risks. Risk assessment is
based on inventories of chemical substances and other dangerous agents, materials and
activities as well as measured data on emissions and imissions. Emission rates from a
technology are more or less constant and pathways remain the same. The design of a
monitoring or an early-warning system can be based on the technological parameters.
Preventive measures and risk mitigation have priority in companies' risk reduction
activities, using the best available or innovative technologies. Industry-specific protec-
tive installations and accessories are available and their application is highly supported
by general and specific regulations. Figure 8.3 shows companies' management tasks
and the participation of environmental management tasks among them. The company
is in the focus and all of its activities have significant impact on the economic, social
and natural environments.
Environmental regulations have become more stringent and require advanced envi-
ronmental management as an intrinsic constituent of a company's management scheme.
The application of an integrated approach is one of the important principles of up-
to-date environmental protection. This means that risk, impact and contamination
of the different environmental compartments have to be examined not separately for
individual environmental compartments (air, water, soil, etc.), but in more complex
ways, which are standardized for each environmental compartment (Zöldi, 2009).
The European IPPC Directive (2008) on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Con-
trol oblige industrial or agricultural installations to receive a permit and comply with
the following:
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Using all appropriate pollution prevention measures, namely the best available
techniques which produce the least waste, use less hazardous substances, enable
the substances generated to be recovered and recycled, etc.;
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Preventing all large-scale pollution;
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Preventing, recycling or disposing of waste in the least polluting way possible;
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Using energy efficiently;
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Ensuring accident prevention and damage limitation;
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Returning sites to their original state when the activity is over.
3 MANAGINGTHE ENVIRONMENT IN GENERAL
Management of the environment in general is a much broader issue than the compa-
nies' environmental management, or the management a contaminated site—it must
integrate natural adverse effects and all kinds of impacts of modern human societies,
not just the production or services of companies. Damage to the environment caused
by catastrophes, accidents, inherited contaminated land, illegal contamination and
waste disposal, as well as the environmental impact of residential land uses, transport
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