The idea of pollution prevention has taken on a new meaning in the past couple of decades. When my generation was in grade school, we were taught the three R’s, reduce, reuse, and recycle, although most of the effort behind this was in the word recycle. That concept is changing. We have learned that the best way to reduce pollution is to reduce the amount of pollution causing “stuff” that we use. This not only means reducing the amount of bottled water that we use, but the amount of pesticides and other chemicals that industry uses as well, among other areas that cause pollution. The reduction of the amount of pollutants that are used or consumed needs to be a collective effort. Nations, states, communities, industries, and individuals all need to reduce the amount of pollutants they use in order to reduce the overall amount of pollutants that end up in the environment each year. As for the remaining two R’s, reuse and recycle, those become much easier to accomplish once the reduction in the amount of pollutants is achieved first.
In order to maintain a world where all the people will have access to clean water, air, and land, we must come up with new ways to address this increase not only in human population but also in other areas such as, commercial, industrial, and residential wastes, storm and waste water treatment, as well as recycling. All of these areas will be explored in order to find ways to incorporate them into today’s modern societies to achieve a more comprehensive pollution prevention program.
According to many leading scientists and demographers, one of the key components to reducing wastes, and in turn, molding a pollution prevention and reduction plan, is slowing the rapid rate of human populations the world over. It is common knowledge that something cannot grow forever; there are limits to what the natural ecosystems of the Earth will be able to handle. This means that the current rate of growth of the human population is not sustainable, and unless it is kept in check, we will reach a level where we can no longer feed everyone. That scenario has played out in the past on Easter Island. Easter Island is a good example of how human populations can reach and exceed the carrying capacity of the surrounding ecosystems. The people of Easter Island are known for the stone statues that they produced many years ago. They had to use the timber found on the island to construct and move the huge stone statues that weighed many tons. Over the course of many years they eventually cut down all of the trees that were not only used for the construction and transportation of the statues, but the trees were also used in heating and cooking (Miller & Spoolman, 2012, p. 35). If the people of Easter Island had been better stewards of the land and had the foresight to see the destructive path that they were headed down, they might have been able to control the use of the timber on the island in a sustainable manner. Instead they increased in number which faster than the ecosystem could keep up which eventually lead to their almost complete demise.
The policy and political fallout from addressing the impacts of human population stabilization varies throughout the world. China, famous for its one child policy is just one example. In China the government has set a limit on how many children a family can legally have to just one. This has caused many Chinese couples to have children illegally. Also, with the China now allowing its people to use social media many have banned together to protest as much as they can, the one-child policy. There are many problems with this policy, one of which is population aging and with thirty years of small family propaganda brought about by the Chinese government, the idea that a small family is ideal (Olesen, 2011).
The one-child policy in China may be extreme it falls in line with what most would think a communist country would do in order to control the increase in human population. From a stand point of human rights it is better to let the family decide. The government might be better off if they offered higher education to women and increased access to family planning services if the family decides to plan the size of their families. In China, which is still undergoing major economic development, has slowed its population increase, showing that addressing poverty as an effective tool in slowing human population (Miller & Spoolman, 2012, p. 142).
While recycling is very important to reducing wastes, the most important aspect is reducing the amount of “stuff” that we have in the first place. This is as true for individuals as it is for businesses and governments. An effective pollution prevention program will incorporate reducing the amounts of solid wastes by controlling the amount that someone takes on to begin with. That means when a purchase is made, such as buying a prepackaged meal with cardboard wrapping or office supplies that come in plastic wrapping, and substituting these for loose items such as an apple from a bin or bulk pens that are sold in a large container individually.
Commercial wastes are generally where most of the wastes that end up in landfills come from. They are often very ineffective at controlling the wastes they produce. Oregon has set up a website that has some very helpful information to assists companies in reaching waste reduction goals. Most of the ideas that are put forth will work everywhere, they just need to be incorporated in the day-to-day processes of companies who wish to reduce wastes and save money. First among the major ideas is to centralize the purchasing of material. This works by consolidating different purchasing departments within a company to cut down on double ordering of the same items, which wastes money and landfill space. The second idea is to consider purchasing items that can be repaired instead of ones that have to be thrown out after they break. This cuts down on wastes, saves money and combats e-waste, which contains harmful chemical and heavy metals which can contaminate ground water and air quality. Some other areas that generate massive amounts of wastes in commercial industries is paper wastes. Some ways to combat paper waste is to use scrap paper for scratch pads, which will save money and reuses unwanted paper scraps. Another way to save paper is to use two sided copies instead of one sided (Commercial Waste Reduction Clearinghouse).
Another area of waste generation that is similar but often generates very harmful byproducts is industrial solid wastes. Industrial wastes can be very hard to get rid of because they often contain chemicals that have to be disposed of properly and in a controlled manner. The best way to avoid having to get rid of these byproducts is to try and engineer chemicals that are less harmful but still do as good of a job, if not better, than the more harmful chemical. This can be hard to accomplish because of the costs involved in paying a chemist to discover or invent a new substance. Although the costs of paying someone to find these chemicals might be high, the cost of disposing of harmful chemicals is increasing at about 25-50% a year in some instances (Rice, p. 85).
Yet another area of great concern for any pollution prevention and pollution reduction program is wastewater treatment coupled with water quality. Wastewater can consist of many different things. The most common types of contaminates are debris and grit which include gravel and sand and larger items such as plastic bags and other items that can make their way into storm drains. Particulate organic material is another type of contamination which includes fecal matter, toilet paper and food wastes that have been run through a garbage disposal. Another contaminate that causes a lot of problems is colloidal and dissolved organic material such as urine, soaps, and detergents. The last type of water wastewater pollution is dissolved organic material, such as nitrogen and phosphorous from farming operations.
There are different methods for cleaning contaminated water depending on how much of a contaminate is involved and the quantity of water that is contaminate. This can be as easy as passing the water through a filter to extract the debris and grit, to high tech, highly sophisticated sludge removal systems that cost millions of dollars to construct (Wright & Boorse, 2011, p. 530). Everyone has to consume water every day, not only by physically drinking water but also by flushing toilets, cooking, and washing. With the increase in human population that is expected to take place over the next half century, it would be wise to incorporate water conservation into every facet of our lives. There are many ways that every individual could do this. Some ideas on how to reduce water consumption would be to take shorter showers and installing water saving shower heads. Also, turning the water off when you are brushing your teeth could save many gallons of water over the course of a year. One way that industrial areas and state and local governments could assist in saving water would be to fix leaking pipes and to upgrade to new systems that use less water.
Recycling is a major area of concern for many people now because many have learned that there is a great deal of money that can be saved and made in the recycling business. Many families across the country now at least recycle aluminum cans because they can get money for tuning them in, vice having to have to pay for their disposal if all you did was throw them away. It is sometimes hard to get everyone on board to start recycling because it is often easier to just throw items away instead of separating them into the different containers. Single-stream recycling is beginning to take off more and more in those communities that have implemented it. Single-stream recycling is where the homeowner does not separate the items before collection, which is more convenient on the homeowner (Botkin & Keller, 2011, p. 531).
Although many people are aware of recycling of materials such as metal and plastic there are other areas of recycling that often get much less attention. Human wastes can be recycled or composted using various designs of composting toilets. The practice of human waste recycling or composting has been around for thousands of years. Everywhere from China to the United States and many countries in between have, at some point in their history, used human waste as an agricultural fertilizer as the main way of disposing of human wastes in urban areas (Botkin & Keller, 2011, p. 532).
Another area of recycling that is very similar but a little different is compositing. Anyone can compost to create a very fertile soil to grow plants in. There are many different designs that can be adapted to just about any setting from a small apartment to a large city who composts large quantities and have invested millions of dollars in equipment. Composting is a biochemical process where organic material such as yard clippings and vegetable wastes are mixed together and after a period of time they decompose into rich, organic soils. Composting has gotten somewhat of a bad reputation in the past, many people think that it smells and takes a long time to get any results. This could not be further from the truth. If correctly done, composting can take place in a very short period of time from days or weeks giving the correct conditions, too months or years if left completely alone and never tended to. The only reason that a compost heap would smell is if animal wastes such as leftover meat and fat, were introduced into the mixture. Not only will animal wastes cause a foul smell, but it will often attract unwanted animals into the area.
The pollution preventions methods that, when used collectively, can reduce the impact that humans currently inflict on the Earth today are mostly simple and can be incorporated into most individuals lives as well as the practices and policies of businesses and governments at all levels. At the beginning of this paper we discussed how human population growth in the coming decades leading up to the mid century mark is expected to be exponential and have far reaching effects on global economies. The policies that are issued today will ultimately have profound effects on the future of not only our country but the of all countries of the world. To effectively address the issue of human population growth me must focus on a couple key factors. Family planning services need to be readily available to those who wish to effectively plan the size of their families. That does not mean free access to abortions or state sponsored abortions, but guidance and contraceptive distribution. Education access to those who wish to gain more knowledge needs to become more available for those in the developing world. Economic development of developing world needs to have the backing and support of the developed world to combat poverty.
Wastes stream are going to increase with population increases. To addresses these issues now instead of waiting for the problem to get worse will only help the situation become manageable. There needs to be incentives to cut wastes such as including the true costs of disposing of garbage in landfills, such as environmental costs like lost land that once was wilderness. How companies conduct business, from the smallest things such as what paper is purchased and to buy disposable technology or technology that can be repaired and used again. Addressing the environmental impacts of chemical that are made in laboratories and there proper disposal. Also converting those old, dangerous chemicals into new, less toxic chemicals will reduce the amount of damage that can be done if we were to continue using those chemicals.
Water wars are expected to increase in the next couple of decades. How we deal with the water we use and the wastewater is going to effect a greater amount of people. The wasteful ways of the past need to stop. In order to prevent pollution to ground water for drinking purposes farming practices that introduce toxins into the area need to be met with new alternatives that allow for increase crop yields while maintaining water quality standards. Reducing individual consumption and repairing or replacing the aging water supply pipes and lines needs to take place sooner rather than later.
Recycling has taken off more and more but there are still areas for improvement. The individuals around the world are becoming more and more aware that there is some money to be made in recycling, even if it means having to separate trash. Many municipalities are starting to see that they can actually save money by recycling in a number of ways. One way is saving landfill space, and they can make money by selling the material to local businesses that need raw material for manufacturing.
No one knows how long we have on this planet, but the way we are going now is unsustainable. We need to reduce pollution and consumption in order to avert disasters in the not too distant future. By incorporating these simple, money saving concepts into our daily activities and into our policies we can start to reverse the trend of environmental degradation. These fixes will require money and time to implement, not to mention the change in attitudes from many across the globe, but to do nothing would be the true disaster.
References
Botkin, D. B., & Keller, E. A. (2011). Environmental Science Earth as a Living Planet (8th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Commercial Waste Reduction Clearinghouse. (n.d.). Retrieved January 1, 2012, from Oregon Department of Environmental Quality: http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/sw/cwrc/strategies/index.htm
Miller, G. T., & Spoolman, S. E. (2012). Living in the Environment. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Olesen, A. (2011, December 25). In China, a daring few challenge one-child limit, Pittsburg-Post Gazette. Retrieved January 1, 2012, from ProQuest: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=3&did=2546893481&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1325439258&clientId=74379
PR Newswire. (2011, April 11). Earth Day: Population Growth is the Overwhelming, and Overlooked Problem. Retrieved December 26, 2011, from ProQuest: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=4&did=2316555951&SrchMode=1&sid=4&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1324914303&clientId=74379
Rice, S. C. (1988, October 24). Minimizing wastes from R&D activites. Retrieved January 1, 2012, from ProQuest: http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/sw/cwrc/strategies/index.htm
Wright, R. T., & Boorse, D. F. (2011). Environmental Science Toward a Sustainable Future 11e. San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings.