Category: Environment

Sciencebase has been focusing on various environmental and third world problems recently. I say third world, because much of what is euphemistically described as the developing world is sadly not developing at all. If the switch from third to developing has done nothing but salve the conscience of the so-called developed world, then it is, as they say, political correctness gone mad.

Many of the problems, or issues if you wish me to be euphemistic in that regard too, are growing – the poverty gap, the spread of disease, environmental damage. One might blame the tyrannical feudalism that is common in parts of the third world, the lack of educational resources, and a not unexpected reluctance on the part of people mired in such issues to abandon the straws at which they clutch to stay afloat (to mix a metaphor or two). But, some of the problems are in part due to the greed and desire of multinational corporations, company shareholders, and Western consumers, especially when one considers environmental effects.

The phrase “carbon footprint” has taken on a somewhat trite role in the media and in marketing reports. It can be used to offset a lot of tiresome obligations and sits neatly in glossy brochures printed on non-recycled board.

Not quite so well-known is the more general phrase “ecological footprint”. This term encompasses not only the problem of humanity pumping millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmospheric greenhouse and accelerating our possible climatic demise but also those problems associated with good old-fashioned pollution, deforestation, desertification and other nasties.

The ecological footprint concept and calculation method were developed by Mathis Wackernagel under William Rees at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada between 1990 and 1994.

Companies can greenwash endlessly in their marketing with double-talk of sustainability, reduced emissions, and smaller ecological footprints, but are they actually greening their industries or have they simply turned up the G channel in their Photoshopped logo?

Crawford Spence of the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada, would agree. He has analysed the social, environmental and sustainability accounting practices of large corporate entities. His eye is usually on the emphasis placed by such corporates on their ideology, their ethics, their integrity when it comes to environmental issues. Writing in IJMCP (researchblogging reference below), Spence says there is significant organisational resistance to more comprehensive sustainability reporting in the form of ecological footprinting.

He has interviewed corporate social responsibility managers at various companies and identified three issues that companies have with ecological footprinting. First, the cost and resource constraints involved, secondly the perceived poor value of carrying out ecological footprint and its actual impact on practices, and thirdly, the marketing problem in that a published ecological footprint might not reveal the “right picture”. Fundamentally, all three aspects of ecological footprinting prevent many companies from being pro-active in greening their business despite what it says on the tin.

In what will inevitably become an increasingly constrained world in terms of ecology, ecological footprinting, or sustainability reporting, where it exists will be little more than a marketing exercise for many corporates. Spence asserts that “without significant regulatory intervention or restructuring of capital markets it is difficult to see how it could possibly be otherwise”.

Crawford Spence (2009). Organisational resistance to ecological footprinting Int. J. Management Concepts and Philosophy, 3 (4), 362-377

A case study

Few people like to dwell on the subject of death, but it’s up there alongside taxes with life’s inevitabilities. But, consider it we must, for the sake of the environment.

At some point in our primordial past the dead were left to the scavenging dogs, the vultures, the flies, and the microbes. There were no ritual burials, no funeral pyres, no floating out to sea on a burning boat. Ida and her cousins certainly didn’t worry about the dead when they were looking for their next meal.

The tombs and torment came much later in our evolution with the advent of self-awareness and imagination, with the recognition of our mortality, the pain of mourning, and the ensuing spirituality that led whole civilisations to build resurrection machines for the dead, whether pyramid shaped, touting beautiful minarets or dreaming spires.

Meanwhile, with all this dying – around 60 million people every year (about 1% of the population) – there’s the environment to consider. Think about it, cremations in the West commonly use vast quantities of fossil fuels to get things up to temperature. They release toxic fumes containing mercury from dental amalgams, for instance, and what of all those tropical hard woods used for the coffins? Admittedly, some users opt for a slightly “greener” departure with more sustainable materials for their casket.

But consider the poor undertaker…and specifically State of Grace, a family-directed funeral business, in Auckland, New Zealand. By August 2007, Deborah Cairns and Fran Reilly had been running the business for just a year but had already won a regional sustainable business award for their efforts to reduce, or even avoid, the use of embalming chemicals and to offer natural product and sustainable alternatives to traditional coffin materials. They’re even driving to find a satisfactory alternative to the big old traditional hearse, although the Toyota Previa has not yet proved popular with mourners.

‘Right now we are desperately trying to find premises,” Reilly reveals in a case study report in the IJSSM. “We’re overflowing in my garage at home and into the hallway – there are caskets everywhere.’ I’m glad they qualified exactly what was overflowing in the hallway. The case study goes on to discuss the development of their alternative “home funeral” business where there are no sombre undertakers in dark suits to take the body and return with an embalmed version for the perusal of family and friends.

But aside from the improved personal service the company offers, we must consider the environmental ethics of death.

We must do so, according to Eva Collins of the University of Waikato and colleagues at Auckland University of Technology, who carried out the case study. The statistics are quite shocking: each year, the US’s 22500 cemeteries buried more than 3 million litres of embalming fluid, used almost 1.5m tonnes of reinforced concrete and nearly 13000 tonnes of steel for vaults. Buried 82000 tonnes of steel, 2500 tonnes of copper and bronze, and more than 10 million metres of hardwood board for caskets.

Coffins treated with wood preservatives take decades to decompose, whereas untreated pine breaks down within ten years, and compostable coffins even quicker, obviously. Embalmed bodies take about 60 years to return “dust to dust” and while they do so there is the real possibility that chemicals will leach into soil and groundwater.

As an afterthought it occurred to me that those leached chemicals wouldn’t necessarily be from the body itself. There are the non-natural components of a modern cadaver to consider – prosthetic metal and alloy implants, electronic implants that might contain heavy metals, arsenic and other elements, dental fillings containing mercury and other metals. Moreover, as we move into the age of more and more bionic technology, this issue will only increase, perhaps to the point where WEEE regulations have to be implemented on dead bodies. Indeed, recycling could be the greenest approach to death yet.

There are also the clothes and jewellry a person might be buried with and their various accompaniments. You can be sure that many people are buried with their iPhones and other devices and in the past there will be thousands of gadgets buried that had nickel-cadmium batteries.

Eva Collins, Kate Kearins, & Helen Tregidga (2009). Exiting in a State of Grace: can death be sustainable? Int. J. Sustainable Strategic Management, 1 (3), 258-284

Charitable schemes to send unwanted electronic equipment, including mobile phones and computers to the developing world could be creating more environmental problems than they solve if the equipment becomes entirely obsolete in a short time. Researchers in India have carried out an evaluation of the trade-offs between cost and environmental risks to prove the point.

There are many benefits to schemes intended to provide computer equipment to the poorer and less connected parts of the world. Primarily, these offer the donor the feelgood factor and on the face of it provide developing nations with much-needed devices.

However, according to Poonam Khanijo Ahluwalia and Arvind Nema of the Department of Civil Engineering, at IIT Delhi, in New Delhi, India, there is growing public concern over the hazards associated with computer and other e-waste. They suggest that a risk assessment that encompasses the whole lifecycle of computers and other equipment is needed before developing nations should accept charitable contributions of electronic equipment considered obsolete by the donors.

Using a case study of Chennai in India, the team has developed an assessment model that can help decision makers choose an optimal approach to e-waste management that looks at reuse time span of each waste category. The approach could help them avoid accepting contributions of electronic equipment that become obsolete and requires disposal or recycling within a short time.

Electronic waste includes the entire stream of electronic goods, including televisions, refrigerators, refurbished computers, large items such as car donations, and mobile phones, explain the researchers. Computer waste, however, represents one of the most significant of all these categories because of the rapid turnover of equipment, similar to the rapid turnover of car models that are adopting computer databases into its features, “With rapid growth and advancement in the IT sector, the average lifespan of computer has shrunk,” the team says, “And, with each new development, consumers often find it cheaper and more convenient to buy a new computer than to upgrade an old one.”

The rate of computer obsolescence in India is about 2% each week, which amounts to millions of computers requiring disposal each year. Added to this is the import of e-waste from other nations often provided through well-intentioned charities hoping to help bring the digital revolution to the developing world.

The absence of proper mechanisms and standards of disposal, mean these high-tech devices laden with toxic components, such as cadmium, mercury, lead, and brominated flame-retardants, often end up in landfills. Here, they can become a serious environmental hazard, particularly to ground water, the researchers say.

The team’s assessment model will allow managers to determine the optimum life cycle and lifespan of electronic devices designated elsewhere as e-waste. “This could guide the authorities to protect infiltration of computers coming in the name of donations and charity, by restricting their import after their optimum lifespan,” the team concludes.

Ahluwalia, P., & Nema, A. (2009). Evaluation of trade-offs between cost, perceived and environmental risk associated with the management of computer waste International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, 3 (1/2) DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2009.024705

There are many worthy charities and organisations offering computers to the needy in many parts of the world. This blog post in no way intends to besmirch their efforts but merely to alert the community to a potential environmental problem associated with growing numbers of obsolete computers and other electronic devices finding their way into the developing world.

Is Earth Hour a great way to raise global awareness of how much energy we are wasting and the possible consequences or our actions? Or, is it simply a cop out so that we can all feel we did "our bit" for the environment without expending any real effort?

With just hours to go for us Brits before we have to switch off the lights, I conducted an ad hoc strawpoll on twitter, here are a few of the early responses.

“Nothing beats finding vast lakes of oil for the pumping, or vast deposits of coal for the digging; thanks mother nature!” proclaimed Craig Grimes of Penn State University in an emailed response to my skeptical question regarding his work on catalysts that can convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a fuel, methane.

I report on his fascinating work in the March issue of Intute Spotlight. The process involves using solar power to chemically reduce carbon dioxide back to a combustible hydrocarbon. Grimes suggests that a flow system employed on fossil fuel burning power station chimney stacks could scrub out the carbon dioxide before it enters the atmosphere and provide us with a viable additional energy source.

Playing devil’s advocate, my skepticism was regarding the energy required to produce the catalysts, which are composed of relatively rare minerals, to build and maintain the plant and to decommission it at end-of-life. There are also the costs of actually trapping the carbon dioxide and then transporting the methane produced to sites where it is needed. Moreover, burning that methane then releases the carbon dioxide elsewhere, so it’s not a quick fix.

Grimes retorts that, “The idea is we better start figuring out how to not put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and begin to anticipate that our vast lakes of oil and vast deposits of coal are finite. Solar energy is not finite, at least in any conventional sense, but it is diffuse. There are lots of pitfalls with renewable energy sources, which is why coal and oil are cheaper to buy and use,” he told me. “Yes, you have to make the materials, install them, etc. All of that takes time, energy and money. However, outside of praying for a miracle, i.e. Having a faith-based energy policy, we would be well put to start trying to come up with an alternative to coal and oil.”

I also asked Grimes whether the same system might be used to process carbon dioxide sequestered from the atmosphere directly. “Yes, carbon dioxide that is to be ‘buried’ could instead be used as feedstock for the process, so its win win,” he told me. “The idea is not to burn the methane venting it back in to the atmosphere. You burn, collect, recycle, burn, collect, recycle…”

My Intute Spotlight column has an entirely environmental theme this month. Alongside my report on Grimes’ carbon conversion catalysts, we have a write-up on the recent modelling of Antarctic cooling 35 million years ago and a report on new materials that can efficiently extract hydrogen gas from mixtures and so might fuel a future hydrogen economy.

Oomman K. Varghese, Maggie Paulose, Thomas J. LaTempa, Craig A. Grimes (2009). High-Rate Solar Photocatalytic Conversion of CO2 and Water Vapor to Hydrocarbon Fuels Nano Letters, 9 (2), 731-737 DOI: 10.1021/nl803258p