Industry is not an optimal part of our society but an integral part of it. Manufacturing industry is an important engine for our economy creating wealth, employement and the material products required in modern living. However, we must understand that our natural resources are extremely important as well. Turkey as a developing country comprimizes between the industrilization process and the care of environmental factors. As we have had the chance of watching the developed countries we have gathered a theoretical experience and we must make use of it.
The costs of environmental improvements are considerable for an organization. The costs would be lower if the environmental issues are considered at the very beginning, when first establishing the plant and the manufacturing processes. Courses of action to be implemented should not be reactive but should be preventive. The feasibility studies must involve the costs of environmental care as a state-of-art, then a feasible solution will certainly be achieved. This will reduce the costs that will be met unexpectedly in the future due to the harm given to the environment.
Pollution control, to be effective and economical, must be considered an integral part of process design. This concept applies regardless of whether the design is for a large new plant of for an altering an existing facility. The design engineers influence on selection of process and equipment is reflected, not only in effectiveness for manufacturing, but also minimizing pollution.
R.C. Paul states that the building of new plants and processes does offer the opportunity to minimize pollution problems at the design stage, and to achieve environmental standards that could not be achieved on old plants.
When deciding whether an environmental imporovement is feasible or not, the related costs and the benefits should be calculated. In some cases it is possible to justify an investment in environmental improvement from the recovery and recycle of a by-product, however in some cases it may not be applicable. According to R.C. Paul,
"It is usually possible to obtain a reasonable assessment of the direct costs of meeting an additional environmental control, although the knock-on effects of these costs resulting from the reduction in competitiveness may only become clear after a period of time. Quantifying the benefits which will be derived from an environmental control or improvement is much more difficult. Usually the benefits are subjective."
At the University of California, Berkeley, a Consortium on Green Design and Manufacturing (CGDM) was formed in 1993 to encourage multidisciplinary research and education on environmental management and pollution prevention issues in critical industries. Form multidisciplinary research agendas among engineering, management, public health, architecture and policy faculty members address the inherently cross-disciplinary issues of environmental management and pollution prevention. Another goal of the consortium is to establish collaborative research with industry partners in the critical commercial sectors of electronics and computers, aerospace, automotive, automotive and construction and to serve as a facilitator for dissemination of information on green design and manufacturing for businesses, governmental agencies, and the non-profit sector. The current projects include:
There are some softwares listed by the consortium for controling the hazard given to the environment for the use of the factories:
RECOVERY OF PRODUCTS
Recovery of resources from solid waste, commonly known as recycling-one of the three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle- is theoretically very appealing. Unfortunately, our present economic system makes efficient (moneymaking) recycling difficult, although the picture is changing rapidly and resource recovery may in the near future become the most desirable means of solid waste management.
In the heat of environmental concern, little attention has been paid to the total process necessary for resource recovery. "Recycling" has, in fact, been confused with "collection" but collection is only one step in the process. After the material has been collected from consumers, it must be cleaned, sold to an industry, transported, remanufactured and (most importantly) sold once to consumers. This last step in fact controls the entire operation. If the remanufactured material can not be sold, there is little sense in doing anything else. We must therefore not think of the collection of newspapers as "recycling" since the cycle is complete only when the paper is reused by consumers.
If we criticize the equal emphasis on energy recovery as well as recycling, it is pointed out that no targets have been set and there is little information on how reuse is to be promoted. Another criticism is that little attention has been paid by the government to promoting and developing end-use markets for collected waste materials, which is essential in "closing the loop".
Jeff Cooper, Chair of Waste Watch commented: " The capital required to build more energy from west sites could be more effectively invested in recycling which is generally more energy efficient, create more employment and allow our finite resources to be re-used."
Materials that are recycled may be used many times, whereas materials, from which energy or compost has been recovered, can not be used again. This is encountered by stating that energy conservation can often be more important environmentally than conserving materials. Also, re-use or recovery processes that use more energy than they save are not environmentally sustainable. In some circumstances disposal in a well-managed controlled landfill site will be the best option.
One supporter of this theory is an article in The New York Times, on 30th June, entitled: ‘Recycling is Garbage.’ Author, John Tierney, criticized the importance placed on recycling targets at great economic cost. He attacked the recycling of household waste as a pseudo-religious pursuit, claiming that its costs outweigh the benefits. He suggests that landfilling is the ideal solution for most wastes and that household separation of wastes, such as rinsing and sorting cans and bottles, is a pointless waste of time and money. Tierney described recycling as perhaps ‘the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.’
While uneconomic and impractical recycling should be avoided wherever possible, genuinely efficient and beneficial recycling could be severely harmed by such theorizing.
The two basic reasons for recycling are (a) conservation of resources, and (b) reduction in volume of refuse to be disposed. Some of the common materials which have been suggested as recyclable are paper, metals, glass and organic.
Paper is one product which is in plentiful supply and fairly clean. But only small percent of our present supply is recycled since, unfortunately, virgin paper is much too cheap to make. The realization that each ton of paper recycled saves about 17 trees from the ax often prompts community paper drives. This type of free labor is necessary in order to keep most repulsing operations solvent.
Unfortunately, the ton of waste paper so lovingly collected seldom saves the 17 trees. Only a small fraction of recycled paper ends up as paper, and most of that is shipped overseas. More commonly, used paper is made into wallboard, insulation, egg cartons, etc., products which would be manufactured from other materials if the volunteer paper crusades ceased. Recycling paper to paper is simply more expensive than making virgin paper.
The only way paper can be recycled as to truly save our forests is to create a market for recycled paper, and make virgin paper artificially expensive. This can be accomplished either through public support, legislation, or taxes.
Metals can be easily recycled from industrial scrap, and this is the largest source of " secondary metals". The second largest source of waste metal is wrecked automobiles. Unfortunately, the present methods of making steel can tolerate only limited scrap input, and thus scrap steel has low market value.
Some aluminum companies have conducted successful drives to collect aluminum cans. These cans are especially obnoxious as litter since they do not rust when discarded and remain as visible trash almost indefinitely.
Glass is the perfect product for recycling. It is clean, plentiful, and easy to reprocess, and can be used in many ways. Unfortunately, it is also cheap. It is about as expensive to make new glass bottle as to recycle or refill an old one. In addition, the raw materials for glass are in such plentiful supply that there does not seem to be anything gained through recycling.
Organics can be converted into several useful products. The most common process, used extensively in many countries is composting. Composting is, in contrast to the landfill, an aerobic method of decomposing solid waste.
As for the development resource recovery, world’s governments should improve their approach to waste management, recycling and waste minimization. They should encourage local authorities, businesses, universities and other bodies to think about environmentally beneficial projects.
According to the recent survey, in which relatively high percent of the people say that they want to help the environment but do not know what to do, indicates the need for more public information on such matters as waste minimization and recycling.
Videos and adds can be prepared that seeks to encourage more people to see the benefits of recycling and is particularly aimed at school children. Also these students should be encouraged to apply their knowledge to real world issues.
An Example from the Industry:
A sample organization that gives importance to environment is a world-wide corporation Unilever. Unilever’s aims are to:
To achieve these, Unilever will:
Unilever will communicate actively in order to:
In Unilever, six key environmental performance parameters are used:
COD represents the ingredient and product lost from the full manufacturing process, and mainly arises during cleaning operations. COD is widely used by regulatory bodies to control industrial wastewater, and to calculate the correct level of charges for downstream municipal wastewater treatment, which is designed to remove most of the COD before the wastewater is discharged to the environment.
In terms of potential impact on the environment, it is important to distinguish between hazardous and non-hazardous waste.
Emissions of SOx contribute to acid rain potential.
Energy consumption is widely used as a measure of manufacturing performance.
Water consumption is also widely used as a measure of manufacturing performance.
CONCLUSION
Only recently has it become imperative for businesses and industries to educate and prepare themselves for the dynamic changes occurring in environmental consiousness and waste management. Companies are now finding it necessary to seek alternative waste management practices due to economic, regulatory, and public interest factors. The challenge lies ahead for industrial, commercial and institutional sectors to realize the positive and realistic role that they can play in environmental issues.
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