Introduction to Environmental Biotechnology - Environmental Biotechnology: Theory and Application - page 8

to boost existing markets and for the opening up of new ones, has undoubtedly
been growing over the last ten years but it remains an important area to be
addressed. The lack of marketing expertise that had formed one of the principal
obstacles to the exploitation of novel opportunities, particularly in the UK, has
been largely overcome, while in addition, technical understanding of biotech
approaches amongst many target industries has also risen. Good education, in
the widest sense, of customers and potential users of biological solutions will
remain a major factor in the development and furtherance of these technologies.
Modalities and local influences
Another of the key factors affecting the practical uptake of environmental biotech-
nology is the effect of local circumstances. Contextual sensitivity is almost
certainly the single most important factor in technology selection and repre-
sents a major influence on the likely penetration of biotech processes into the
market place. Neither the nature of the biological system, nor of the application
method itself, play anything like so relevant a role. This may seem somewhat
unexpected at first sight, but the reasons for it are obvious on further inspection.
While the character of both the specific organisms and the engineering remain
essentially the same irrespective of location, external modalities of economics,
legislation and custom vary on exactly this basis. Accordingly, what may make
abundant sense as a biotech intervention in one region or country, may be totally
unsuited to use in another. In as much as it is impossible to discount the wider
global economic aspects in the discussion, disassociating political, fiscal and
social conditions equally cannot be done, as the following example illustrates.
Back in 1994, the expense of bioremediating contaminated soil in the United
Kingdom greatly exceeded the cost of removing it to landfill. Within six years
successive changes of legislation and the imposition of a landfill tax, the situ-
ation was almost completely reversed. Unsurprisingly, in those countries where
landfill had always been an expensive option and thus played less of a major role
in national waste management strategy, remediation has generally tended to be
embraced far more readily.
While it is inevitable that environmental biotechnology must be considered as
contextually dependent, clearly as the previous example shows, those contexts
can change. In the final analysis, it is often fiscal instruments, rather than the
technologies, which provide the driving force and sometimes seemingly minor
modifications in apparently unrelated sectors can have major ramifications for the
application of biotechnology. Again as has been discussed, the legal framework
is another aspect of undeniable importance in this respect. Increasingly tough
environmental law makes a significant contribution to the sector and changes in
regulatory legislation are often enormously influential in boosting existing mar-
kets or creating new ones. When legislation and economic pressure combine,
as, for example they have with the likes of European Directives on Land-
fill, Integrated Pollution Control and Urban Wastewater, the impetus towards