Introduction to Environmental Biotechnology - Environmental Biotechnology: Theory and Application - page 6

this growth, including a greater general awareness of environmental issues, the
widespread adoption of sustainable best practice by industry and geo-political
changes that open new territories for technology transfer. In addition, biotech-
nology has increasingly gained acceptance for clean manufacturing applications,
with the use of biomimetics in particular showing marked expansion over recent
years, while energy production, waste management and land remediation have
all benefited from the ongoing trend stimulating the sales of biotechnology-based
environmental processing methods. Water treatment in its broadest sense has been
perhaps the biggest winner in all this, the sector now accounting for some 25%
of the total global environmental market (Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, 2009).
The export of environmental technologies is now a significant contributor to the
global market, which will continue to expand in the burgeoning worldwide trend
towards driving economic development alongside strong ecological awareness.
Although such technology transfer is likely to continue to play a major role on
the global scene, it is also probable that many countries will increasingly build
their own comprehensive indigenous environmental industry over the coming
years, thus circumventing their dependence on innovation imports.
Over the last decade, as many predicted, the regulatory framework across the
world has experienced a radical tightening, with existing legislation on environ-
mental pollution being more rigorously enforced and more stringent compliance
standards implemented. It is hard to imagine that this trend will stop in the com-
ing years, which once again feeds the expectation that it will act as a significant
stimulus for the sales of biotechnology-based environmental processing methods.
This would seem particularly likely in the current global main markets for envi-
ronmental technologies, namely Asia in general, China, Japan, Europe and the
USA (Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, 2009).
The benefits are not, however, confined to the balance sheet. The OECD (2001)
concluded that the industrial use of biotechnology commonly leads to increas-
ingly environmentally harmonious processes and additionally results in lowered
operating and/or capital costs. For years, industry has appeared locked into a
seemingly unbreakable cycle of growth achieved at the cost of environmental
damage. This OECD investigation provided probably the first hard evidence to
support the reality of biotechnology's long heralded promise of alternative pro-
duction methods which are ecologically sound and economically efficient. A
variety of industrial sectors, including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, food
and energy were examined, with a particular emphasis on biomass renewable
resources, enzymes and bio-catalysis. While such approaches may have to be
used in tandem with other processes for maximum effectiveness, it seems that
their use invariably leads to reduction in operating or capital costs, or both. More-
over, the research also concluded that it is clearly in the interests of governments
of the developed and developing worlds alike to promote the use of biotechnol-
ogy for the substantial reductions in resource and energy consumption, emissions,
pollution and waste production it offers. The potential contribution to be made
by the appropriate use of biotechnology to both environmental and economic
sustainability would seem to be clear.