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Throughout
his existence on the Earth, even before history started being
recorded, man adapted his needs to his natural environment. Man’s
adaptability to changing conditions and resources is remarkable. His
habitat has spread to all parts of the Earth, and this adaptation
has produced a great diversity of life-styles and cultures. However,
over a period of time, there has been mismanagement and misuse of
the environmental resources on which the very survival of man
depends. Thus today, we are facing a serious situation, which calls
for better management of the environment so that sustained
development can take place in harmony with the environment. The
emergence of the concept of sustainable development in recent years
has brought in the general realisation that societal perceptions
must shift towards ecological determinism so as to achieve
qualitative growth within the limits of the ecosystem’s carrying
capacity.
The
term ‘environment’ is often used in a broad sense covering
almost any condition or factor surrounding man – be it physical,
biological, technical, economic, political, cultural, psychological,
etc. While such a holistic concept is no doubt stimulating to the
mind, the practical issue of managing the environment rationally
requires a more precisely defined term. For that purpose, we may
consider that man’s environment consists of two sets of
interacting factors:
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a) |
The
physical resources of the environment necessary to sustain
life and to satisfy man’s needs, and |
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b) |
The
social factors which determine the ways in which man uses
these resources. |
Among
the social factors, technology is of special interest, i.e. the
tools and processes developed by man to transform resources into
products for his use. The other important factors are economic, i.e.
the generation and distribution of wealth and the patterns of
production and consumption, and environmental law which defines the
rights and duties in the use of resources and the preservation of
the quality of the environment.
It
has often been mentioned that technology is at the root of
environmental problems, leading to pollution, generation of wastes
and depletion of resources. However, technology can also play a
major part in providing the solution to these problems. This is the
objective of Environment Friendly Technology (EFT), an approach
which considers production use and final disposal of a product in a
total input-output framework. Within this framework are included the
materials and energy consumed in production, and all the outputs
including wastes generated from the production process.
The
control of industrial pollution started with
"end-of-the-pipe" abatement technology, such as filters,
scrubbers and precipitators to eliminate gaseous pollutants and
particulates from stack gases, and suspended solids and dissolved
materials from liquid effluents. The problem with these devices is
that they can be expensive, consume much energy and sometimes merely
transform pollutants from one form to another. Furthermore, the
added cost of abatement is often quite high in polluting industries.
Nevertheless, much of today’s pollution control is based on
abatement technology. Environment-friendly technology, on the other
hand, seeks to modify the entire process with a view to conserving
resources, reducing pollution and generating little or no waste.
Technological
progress has three objectives: to be economically viable, to improve
the quality of life, and to have positive impacts on the
environment. All these three objectives must be critically assessed
before implementation as waste from industrial, domestic or
agricultural processes can easily disturb the ecological balance. As
far as an enterprise is concerned, long term investment in a
technology requires a key management decision since its choice tends
to lock the enterprise into a particular methodology, which dictates
the inputs, processes and outputs for a long time.
Industry
in India, to a large extent, has been modeled on the lines that
existed in industrialized countries. In fact, many plant processes
have been imported on a turn-key basis, the mode of operation being
highly conventional. While there exists a great potential for the
newly coming-up industries to resort to environmentally benign
technologies, remodeling of the existing ones would require
significant economic investment and face a resistance to change.
Some
of the constraints for a change-over include lack of knowledge of
cleaner technologies that are available, coupled with an
unwillingness to adopt processes which are seen as untried. In
addition to the technical and economic risks bound up with the
establishment of any new procedure, it would appear that the risk in
terms of working conditions such as changes in habits and human
adaptation acts as a brake on dissemination of clean technologies.
There would also be difficulties in drawing up criteria for
selecting R&D projects for support and the amount of money would
again have to be large to have a significant impact. Without prior
and independent financial commitment from industry, the technologies
would not be developed to the point of commercialization.
It
will not be possible to achieve a technological shift only by
enacting legislation, but by introducing positive policies of
promotion specifically devoted to generate interest amongst
industries for prevention of pollution at source.
Environment-friendly technologies can become attractive in the
existing circumstances, provided the conditions of marketability,
cost- effectiveness and availability of technical know-how are
satisfied.
The
innovative clean technologies are supposed to have various
advantages over the conventional capital-intensive methods of
pollution control. These gains include the following:
| q |
more
efficient processes of manufacture; |
| q |
more
cost effective; |
| q |
more
efficient waste management and effluent treatment; |
| q |
utilization
of residues and recyclable materials; |
| q |
reduced
requirement of raw materials and water leading to
conservation of resources; |
| q |
less
power consumption leading to energy conservation; and |
| q |
higher
quantity and upgraded quality of production. |
In
many cases, adopting the preventive approach through environment
friendly technologies can be a source of profits for the enterprise.
Increased profits can result from cutting costs through improved
material efficiency, using your own manpower and know-how to make
improvements and selling by - products and residues.
In
this context, some of the strategies, which can be applied to
promote environment-friendly technologies, are as follows:
| q |
redesign
products to use less non- renewable or polluting inputs; |
| q |
modify
processes to use less raw materials and produce less waste; |
| q |
adapt
equipment and installations to conserve energy and
materials; and |
| q |
recover
and recycle wastes. |
It
will, therefore, be seen that there is considerable benefit to the
enterprise in adopting environment-friendly technologies, while
contributing at the same time to the larger objective of protecting
the environment and conserving resources. q
The
author has been a
Chamber of Commerce official
with 37 years of professional and
management experience.
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