Our liquid planet glows like a soft blue sapphire in the hard-edged darkness of space. There is nothing else like it in the solar system. It is because of water.
We are using available freshwater unsustainably by extracting it faster than nature can replace it and by wasting, polluting and underpricing
this irreplaceable natural resource.
Freshwater supplies are not evenly distributed, and one of every ten people on the planet does not have adequate access to clean water.
We are managing freshwater poorly.
Freshwater: Water that contains very low levels of dissolved salts. Freshwater is one of our poorly managed resources. It is available at too low a cost to billions
of consumers, and this encourages waste and pollution of this resource.
Most of the earth's water is not available
Only 0.024% of the planet's enormous water supply is readily available to people as liquid freshwater.
The rest is in the saly oceans, in frozen polar ice caps and glaciers and in deep underground aquifers.
Principle of sustainability: A serious violation of the full-cost pricing. Global basis, there is plenty of freshwater but it is not distributed evenly Canada has 20%
of its liquid freshwater, while China has only 6.5% of the supply.
Freshwater shortages will grow
Freshwater scarcity stress: Comparison of the amount of freshwater available with the amount used by humans. Area are dry climate, drought too many people using a water supply and wasteful
of water. Currently about 30% of the earth's land an area roughly five times the size of the United States experiences severe drought.
Reducing water pollution requires that we prevent it, work with nature to treat sewage, cut resource use and
waste reduce poverty and slow population growth.
Water pollution: Is any change in water quality that can harm living organisms or make the water unfit for human uses such as drinking, irrigation and recreation.
Point sources: Discharge pollutants into bodies of surface water at specific locations through drain pipes, ditches or sewer lines.
Nonpoint sources: Are broad diffuse areas where rainfall or snowmelt washes pollutants off the land into bodies of surface water.
Agricultural activities: Are by far the leading cause of water pollution. The most common pollutants in sediments eroded from croplands.
Mining: Third largest sources. Surface mining distrubs the land, which in turn leads to major erosion of sediments and runoff of toxic chemicals.
Reducing water pollution
The life cycle of a product begins when it is manufactured (its cradle) and ends when it is discarded as solid waste, typically in a landfill or as litter (its grave).
Designer William McDonough wants us to abandon this cradle-to-grave view of the life cycle of products. he argues for a cradle-to-cradle approach, in which we think of products
as parts of a continuing cycle instead of as materials that become solid waste that is burned or buried in landfills or that ends up as littler.
He envisions an economy where all products on their parts will be reused repeatedly in other products. Parts that are no longer useful would be degradable so that nutirent cycles could
recycle their materials and chemicals.
Cradle-to-cradle design is a form of biomimicry because it helps implement the earth's chemical cycling principle of sustainability.
Solid waste contributes to pollution and includes valuable resources that could be used or recycled.
Hazardous waste contributes to pollution, as well as to natural capital degradation, health problems and premature deaths.
Solid waste is piling up
In the natural world, there is essentially no waste because the wastes of one organism become nutrients or raw materials for others in food chains and food webs. This natural cycling of nutrients is the basis of the chemical cycling principle of sustainability.
one major category of waste is.
Solid waste: Any unwanted or discarded material that is not a liquid or a gas.
Two major types of solid waste.
Industrial solid waste: Produce by mines, farms and industries that supply people with goods and services. It also includes construction and demolition waste.
Municpal solid waste(MSW): Often wastes produced by homes and workplace other than facotries.
In more-developed countries, msot MSW is collected and buried in landfills or burned in incinerators.
About 80% of this wate is washed or blown off beaches, pour out of storm drains, and floats down streams and rivers that empty into the sea.
The north pacific garbage patch - viewed as the planet's largest human trash dump - occupies an area estimated to be at least the size of Texas. Such estimates are estimated to be at least the size of Texas.
Research shows that the tiny plastic particles ultimately degrade into microscopic particles that can contain potentially hazardous chemicals. Some long-lived toxins in these microscopic plastic particles can build up to high concentrations in food chains and webs and can end up in
fish sandwiches and other forms of seafood.
Since the great pacific garbage patch was discovered, five other huge swirling garbage patches have been found in gyres in the world's other oceans. In total, these garbage patches cover an area of ocean greater than all of the earth's land area - the massive pollution legacy of a throwaway human culture.
Unfortunately, there is no praactical or affordable way to clean up this gigantic amount of marine litter. The only useful approach is to prevent the garbage patches from growing by reducing the production of solid waste.
Cleaning:
Paint Products:
General:
Gardening:
Automotive:
A sustainable approach to solid waste is first to produce less of it, then to reuse
or recycle it, and finally to safely dispose of what is left.
Waste management: Which focuses on reducing their enviornmental harm.
Waste reduction: Focused on producing much less solid waste and reusing, recycling or
composting what is produced as much as possible.
Intergraded Waste management: A variety of coodinated strategies for waste management and
waste reduction.
The four Rs of waste reduction
Reuse:
Health risks from incinerators and landfills, when averaged over the entire country, are quite low.
However, the risks for people living near such facilities are higher.
Manufacturers and waste industry officials point out that something must be done with the toxic and hazardous wastes created in the production of certain goods and services,
Why aren't reuse and recycling more common?