An American Mess
Each year Americans use, discard and recycle more than 17 billion tons of waste. Improved feedback on how we can re-utilize our discards is an emerging frontier of economic development. How we stimulate a greater understanding on how we can either minimize and/or recover this waste. Also such endeavors will foster similar efforts in other enterprises.
Improved inventories of what we discard may stimulate a greater understanding of how we can either minimize or better recover these resources. The connection between waste and our land, air and water is a very important one. Our increased living standard results in not just resource consumption but the need to develop future resources from waste to meet increased demands for new products. Better tracking of the entire material cycle can provide us with better insights to manage our limited resources. Even though we have made major advances in cleaning up the environment, we must evolve as better managers of our natural and material resources. Also as we minimize our ecological impacts there will be increased profits from this pollution prevention. We must integrate and track key interconnections such as ;
How does better materials translate to lessen global warming since Americans use 7 billion tons of carbon that we yearly contribute to the atmosphere. We are 5% of the world’s population producing 22% of the climate altering CO2 added to the atmosphere. Scientists agree that carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and other greenhouse gasses are altering our climate.
How to conserve water. Americans use three times more water each day than Europeans or 1,300 gallons each person here in the U.S. Wastewater reuse will become a significant growth industry. According to the U.S. National Research Council, initial clean-up of contaminated groundwater at 300,000 sites in the United States could cost up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
How to safely dispose of our radioactive waste. Each year in the United States 2,000 tons of spent fuel is generated by the nation’s 103 operating nuclear power plants that provide 20 percent of America’s electricity. Roughly 40,000 tons of waste has been generated by America’s commercial nuclear plants. Some experts calculate that this waste will remain dangerous for 10,000 years. However, used plutonium lasts for 250,000 years and the contaminated nickel in core reactors lasts 3 million years. Only two pounds of plutonium is required to make a nuclear device.
How to manage the 3 billion tons of oil and gas wastes generated yearly by oil and gas exploration and production. Just explore oil's impact. For example there are 81,000 abandoned oil and gas wells left orphaned, endangered people (and the environment. Estimated at $6 billion to clean, funded by taxpayers money. Each year America consumes more than 240 billion gallons of oil. Also, we produce 72% of the world’s hazardous waste, while yearly using 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides. From another extreme hundreds of millions of gallons of used oil and antifreeze are thrown away by millions of Americans who change their oil (do-it-yourselfers) and then improperly dispose of billions of used oil filters.
How to promote green building. Buildings have a significant impact on the environment, accounting for one sixth of the world’s freshwater withdrawal, one-quarter of its wood harvest, and two-fifths of its materials and energy flow. Each year we lose a million tons of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. According to the U.S. Green Building Council there is as much C&D produced as municipal garbage. Buildings consume 40 percent of the raw stone, gravel and sand used globally each year
How to improve the manner in which we dispose of waste, since each year millions of tons are going into landfills. Landfills are one of the largest sources of methane released in the United States but now this gas is being converted into usable energy. An EPA reports documents that landfills may lack adequate environmental insurance for future clean-up costs.
How to improve the recycling of biosolids to reduce risks to our health and environment. More than 16,000 sewage treatment facilities serving 190 million Americans generate biosolids or sludge. These facilities also serve thousands of industrial and commercial establishments. Approximately eight million dry metric tons of biosolids are produced annually--that's about 70 pounds per person per year. About 54% of these biosolids are land applied. Another 500 million tons of manure is produced yearly by agricultural animals.
How to compost and control our erosion. Roughly one-half of our solid waste is organic. Besides paper, yard and vegetative waste over 96 billion pounds of food a year or one quarter of America’s food that is lost. Compost both generates new soil and controls erosion. 2 billion tons of topsoil is lost through erosion every year. An average of nearly 17 tons of soil is lost per acre of cropland per year. There are estimates that cropland, pasture and range-land contribute more than 50% of the sediments discharged to surface water.
How to reform our regulatory process to stimulate environmental improvements rather than increase litigation and/or studies. More than $25 billion is expected to be spent on programs at 54 regulatory agencies. How effective does this expenditure translate in the protection of the public health and environment while creating new forms of commerce?
How to best manage all facets of our limited resources via: source reduction, improved planning, better product design, green purchasing and buying recycled, composting and numerous types of reuse and forms of recycling that need to help create a better inventory of how we can better manage our materials.
Other Design and Ingenious Applications
With better tracking and understanding of our nation’s materials flows, comprehensive environmental best management of the entire materials/by-products cycle can transform our liabilities into assets. Such reform also can be applied in the inventory, administration and governance in facets of American life. Such new ventures can chart a course of frugal action. Fundamental to this process is a need to engage people to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. As we take better inventory of our assets then we will better use our dwindling resources lessening our carbon impact.
Comments