Archive for January, 2009

When people think of air pollution, they most often associate it with the sort of dirty discharge that can be readily seen coming from the smokestacks of coal-fired plants or even the particulate matter that is emitted from automotive tailpipes. However, the most common and potentially dangerous gases that threaten life on Earth are actually greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide and methane, together, account for about 30% of the “greenhouse effect” that, at levels that had been steady since the end of the last ice age, keeps the Earth at the relatively comfortable temperatures that more life enjoys. However, while the levels of water vapor (which actually account for most of the greenhouse effect) have remained relatively stable, the amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere has sky-rocketed, due largely to the burning of fossil fuels and the massive increase in the number of ruminant animals used for meat production.
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The problem of pollution is not small. It is something that requires a massive effort to solve. Without the work of leaders, businesses and individuals the pollution problem will continue to grow without an end in sight.

Fortunately, solutions are numerous and there is a lot of work on all levels for the prevention of pollution. Education and awareness is at an all time high, so everyone is aware of the importance of making our world pollution free.

Governmental Role

The government’s role in the United State for the prevention of pollution is a very strong one. The government has set standards, created regulations and helped to greatly reduce pollution in the country. This includes the passing of the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 which was a major steeping stone in prevention of pollution, setting the country in the right direction to really stop pollution and prevent its occurrence in the future. Additionally, they have helped other nations to develop their own methods for prevention of pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency plays a very large role in the prevention of pollution. The EPA is the main regulator of businesses and other sources of pollutants.

Business Role

Industrial pollution accounts for a very large percentage of pollution. The role of businesses in pollution prevention, therefore, is very important. The cooperation of businesses helps to ensure that this segment is greatly reducing or eliminating pollution that they cause.

Business pollution has a wide spread effect. Generally the pollution is quite harmful, involving harmful substances. It can also be something that may seem less harmless like smoke, which contributes to smog. Smog is a horrible air pollution that has severe health effects.

Businesses can help in the prevention of pollution through following regulations and laws about waste disposal and using operation methods that are proven to reduce or eliminate pollution.

Individual Role

Individual’s often think there is little they can do to combat a global problem like pollution. However, the role of individuals in the prevention of pollution has a great impact on the overall picture. When every individual does their part it can add up quickly.

The move towards the use of hybrid vehicles and alternative gasoline may have been prompted more by the price of fuel than the concern over pollution, but this trend has greatly helped reduce vehicle emissions which can cause pollution of the air, water and soil.

Any little effort an individual takes to stop polluting is helpful. Not littering, not dumping waste in unauthorized areas and buying energy efficient appliances are all examples of how an individual can help in the prevention of pollution.

Water pollution is a serious problem. Efforts must be made now to reduce the amount of water pollution to ensure the quality of the water in the future so that it does not become increasingly unsafe for human consumption. There are many things that can be done to prevent water pollution such as not letting pollutants and contaminants run into storms gutters and properly disposing of hazardous chemicals instead of washing them down the sink or flushing them down the toilet.

Three additional solutions to water pollution are detention, retention and water hazards. Detention Ponds are used as solutions to water pollution by acting as a “holding cell” for waters that have run off from parking lots and other such areas that may be teeming with pollutants. From there the water can be transferred into retention and water hazard ponds. These are designed to hold surplus waters for a short period of time.

There are other solutions to water pollution that involve landscaping and yard maintenance. Buffer strips of aquatic nutrient loving plants should be planted around ponds and lakes to act as a “filter” that will stop heavy sediments from entering into the body of water. These buffer zones also help to keep out trash and debris and help to absorb some of the contaminants so that they do not run off into the water supply. Ponds that have excessive amount of algae in them pose another kind of a problem with water pollution. Algae steal oxygen from other plants causing them to die off. When plants in the ponds die off it further reduces the amount of oxygen in the water exacerbating the problem. Some solutions to water pollution in regard to an overabundance of algae concerns installing aeration systems where it is possible to help add oxygen to the pond. There are three different types of aeration systems that can be implemented in this way, surface aerators, sub-surface aerator, and diffused systems. All three types are effective in increasing the oxygen levels of the water and helping with the circulation and are very practical and effective solutions to water pollution. One of the more unusual but highly effective solutions to water pollution involves using putting barley into lakes. The barley decomposes and releases a chemical byproduct that prevents algae from growing. This method for algae removal is still experimental and it has been debated as to how effective it really is. Bio-augmentation is another one of the natural solutions to water pollution that uses naturally occurring bacteria to prevent an overload of nutrients in a body of water. There are many solutions to water pollution that can be enacted to make the water quality better for the future.

When composting the food waste from your home you will be helping to recycle and return nutrients to the environment that have been taken out at some point. If you love plants or have a garden that you love to see grow and produce fruits and vegetable for your enjoyment, you will want to be composting food waste. If you are composting food waste, you will be creating a great fertilizer or soil conditioner to be use in your plants, flowerbed, in-home green house or garden.
There are so many ways to go about composting food waste; you may have a hard time narrowing it down to the one that is best suited for your needs. You can choose from composting with worms, food waste composting, dog waste composting, composting plants and animal waste composting to name a few methods of composting to choose.
You can choose composting food waste indoors or outdoors. You can compost with a traditional composting bin, worm composting or even a composting toilet. You can be composting food waste from only your home or you can collect food waste from family, friends and neighbors to add to your composting bin.
There is pre-consumer and post-consumer food waste. Pre-consumer food waste is the easiest food waste to compost. Pre-consumer is the food waste from the preparation processes or damaged food bulk during processing of raw material foods, and has never been seen by the consumer. Pre-consumer food waste generally has been separated from the other waste and does not need any special handling to prevent the future compost from being contaminated. Pre-consumer food waste would be any food waste produced in processing plants, restaurant kitchens, farms, warehouses and even food waste lost during the transportation process. Post-consumer food waste is any food waste that is created by the consumer after it has reached the end-user consumer. The post-consumer food waste is usually subject t outside contaminants that must be separated before being added to any container that is composting food waste.
The food industry benefits greatly from composting food waste. The benefits that the food industry is impacted by from the composting food waste are great and vast. Composting food waste by business reduces solid waste cost, the waste of large quantities of recyclable raw products is reduced and businesses can educate the consumer on composting food waste benefits. In addition, businesses can use composting food waste as an environmentally friendly marketing tool and marketing tool as being an assistant to local farmers. It also closes the food waste loop by returning it to farmers and most important, it reduces the need for more landfill space.

Water pollution is a serious problem. Efforts must be made now to reduce the amount of water pollution to ensure the quality of the water in the future so that it does not become increasingly unsafe for human consumption. There are many things that can be done to prevent water pollution such as not letting pollutants and contaminants run into storms gutters and properly disposing of hazardous chemicals instead of washing them down the sink or flushing them down the toilet.

Three additional solutions to water pollution are detention, retention and water hazards. Detention Ponds are used as solutions to water pollution by acting as a “holding cell” for waters that have run off from parking lots and other such areas that may be teeming with pollutants. From there the water can be transferred into retention and water hazard ponds. These are designed to hold surplus waters for a short period of time.

There are other solutions to water pollution that involve landscaping and yard maintenance. Buffer strips of aquatic nutrient loving plants should be planted around ponds and lakes to act as a “filter” that will stop heavy sediments from entering into the body of water. These buffer zones also help to keep out trash and debris and help to absorb some of the contaminants so that they do not run off into the water supply. Ponds that have excessive amount of algae in them pose another kind of a problem with water pollution. Algae steal oxygen from other plants causing them to die off. When plants in the ponds die off it further reduces the amount of oxygen in the water exacerbating the problem. Some solutions to water pollution in regard to an overabundance of algae concerns installing aeration systems where it is possible to help add oxygen to the pond. There are three different types of aeration systems that can be implemented in this way, surface aerators, sub-surface aerator, and diffused systems. All three types are effective in increasing the oxygen levels of the water and helping with the circulation and are very practical and effective solutions to water pollution. One of the more unusual but highly effective solutions to water pollution involves using putting barley into lakes. The barley decomposes and releases a chemical byproduct that prevents algae from growing. This method for algae removal is still experimental and it has been debated as to how effective it really is. Bio-augmentation is another one of the natural solutions to water pollution that uses naturally occurring bacteria to prevent an overload of nutrients in a body of water. There are many solutions to water pollution that can be enacted to make the water quality better for the future.

Sheet composting is a method of composting that uses the ground you wish to enrich as the holding area for the green plant material that you wish to compost. The green plant material is considered green manure when it is used for this purpose.
Fava beans are a great edible vegetable that can be used as green manure to perform sheet composting. After you have picked the beans off from the fava bean plants, they will grow new, fat and juicy sprouts. After the fava bean plant has developed the new bean sprouts, you will want to cut down the bean plants and turn the plant material into the ground to be used as the green manure. After the fava bean plants are cut and turned into the ground, you need to spread hay or straw across the ground on top of where you have just turned the green manure plant material into the ground.

By covering the ground where you turned the fava bean plants into it with hay or straw you have just began the process of sheet composting. The sheet composting process takes about 6 months to be completed successfully and for the ground to reap the full benefits of the green manure from the sheet composting. After the sheet composting process has completed you will a have newly re-vitalized growing area to plant your crops for the new growing season.

The sheet composting method of composing is a passive type of composting. Passive composting is composting with little to no physical labor over some time.
Another method of sheet composting is to trim plant life from an established border only to be left where they lay. The thoughts behind this are, why move the materials you wish to compost to another area only to move them back to where they came from in the beginning.

New and fertile gardening sites can be created through sheet composting. If you have an area that you have groundcover plants like ivy and vica you can cut these down or uproot them. The desired area may also be an area that you had let go to the weeds or covered with brush and miscellaneous debris. After cutting them down or uprooting them you can leave them lay as they fell or you can turn them into the ground and cover the area with straw or hay, either choice will create a sheet composting area. Over time of repeating the sheet composting process to this area you will have produced a very rich and fertile growing region.

There was once a time when political assassinations were carried out with botanical poisons. However, many, if not most, of the poisons that were once successfully used are now well known to science and detectable in a postmortem examination. Taking a page out of the James Bond play book, some of the most high profile assassinations (and assassination attempts) have utilized the most toxic chemicals on Earth including dioxins and radioactive isotopes.

Most famous, perhaps, was the attack on the Ukrainian presidential hopeful in 2004. In this instance, it is theorized that dioxins were placed in a bowl of soup. Though he survived the attack, the once handsome man lives in constant pain with wrecked skin and a poor prognosis.

Even more troubling perhaps is the case of a Russian spy who was apparently murdered while in London in 2006 with radioactive isotopes. While no one has even been implicated in either of these attempts, the ability of anyone to use these pollutants aggressively is worrying, to say the least.
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Pollution is a word that no one is stranger to. We have heard it on the news, read it in articles, learned about it in school, and we are affected by it on a daily basis. However, there are many types of pollution and each has its own set of causes and effects.

Types Of Pollution: Air Pollution

One of our body’s most necessary and automated functions is breathing. We step outside and take a deep breath, thinking we are doing our bodies well; however with each breath we are taking in a population of toxins. These pollutants come from things like:

• Automobiles – Autos and other forms of transportation burn fossil fuels with put out large amounts of carbon dioxide.
• Industry – Living near or working in factories can also increase your likelihood of exposure to carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
• Chemicals – Simple household chemicals used in personal care and cleaning release certain toxins into the air.

Exposure to this type of pollution can result in nasal problems, coughing, asthma, certain cancers, and heart problems.

Types Of Pollution: Water Pollution

Water is one of our Earth’s precious resources and we are damaging it at alarming rates. There is a thinking out there that it is an endless supply, but that is far from the truth. There are several reasons for water pollution, which include:

• Industry – Direct dumping of waste products into our water, improper disposal that ends up in the groundwater, and general runoff of toxins. These illegal practices occur every day.
• Construction – Poor construction or forestry practices that strip the land of necessary root-bearing plants will allow for erosion.
• Dumping – Illegal dumping of wastes, rubbish, and oil byproducts into our oceans.

There are many other causes of this type of pollution and all are damaging to our marine mammals, fish, plant life, and to us. The toxins will cause illness and in many cases death.

Types Of Pollution: Noise Pollution

It is not until we are robbed of silence that we realize how important it is to our everyday health. Noise pollution is another type of pollution. Excess exposure to noise can affect our nervous system and cause unneeded stress to our minds and bodies. Some noise pollutant culprits include:

• Airports and Cities – The sounds of airplanes taking off and landing can be a contributing factor. All the sounds of city, including factories, autos, traffic, people, and more can result in higher stress levels.
• The Office – The need to conserve space has brought on a virtual community of cubicles that do not block the sounds around us. Things like phones, paper copiers, clicking keyboards, drumming fingers, coughing, conversations, and more can be grading on one’s nerves.
• Home – The peace of home is not like it once was. The need to have multiple media mediums has brought the stress to the home front.

Believe it or not there are more types of pollution out there; each one bringing on more problems to our stressed out world. There needs to be more education so that we may reduce the amount of pollution we are exposed to and for those who have yet to exist.

Introduction

The massive pace of industrialization and advanced commercial activity over the last few years has transformed the way growth and development influences mankind.

Along with the vast series of benefits, such high scales of growth have brought along with it a series of fallouts and environmental hazards, posing a major challenge of management of the same for authorities as well the common man.

Key Aspects

The massive increase in the quantity of industrial waste being generated is one of the most prominent instances of the negative impacts of growth and development all over the globe. The subject of industrial waste management has attracted a great amount of study and research activities in an attempt to look for the right amount of solutions and remedies.

Industrial waste management basically revolves around the identification, analysis and processing of industrial waste in order to achieve the objectives of maximum utilization and conservation of resources, along with harnessing the opportunities to salvage, reuse and recycle the constituents of industrial waste.

The practice of industrial waste management is extremely important in the wake of the fact that industrial waste is a major component of the waste stream. The key objective of industrial waste management is to practice a series of waste reduction techniques in an industrial setting. The most important practice in this aspect includes the waste minimization techniques such as source reduction techniques, recycling techniques, waste auditing and the practice of newly developed techniques such as cleaner production.

To begin with, the process of waste minimization includes any techniques followed for source reduction or recycling activity undertaken by a waste generator. Such activity results in a reduction of waste produced along with a reduction in the toxicity of the waste.

One of the most important techniques as a part of this process in order to ensure effective industrial waste management includes the source reduction techniques. This step is basically carried out by changing the composition of the product to reduce the amount of waste that might result from the use of the products, along with reducing or eliminating hazardous materials that might be entering in the production process.

Meanwhile, as a part of this process for industrial waste management, the solution providers often attempt to return the waste material to the original process, use the waste material as a raw material substitute, process waste material for resource recovery or as a by-product and many more.

Similarly, waste auditing defines sources, quantities and types of waste generated along with identifying where, when and how the wastes are produced along with establishing concrete targets and priorities for waste reduction.

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Introduction

The Institute for Environmental Education Inc. is one of the premier institutions involved in the service of environment education since 1987. Dealing effectively with the environmental and occupational health and safety concerns, the institution has already provided state-of-the-art training to thousands of individuals in all the aspects of environmental protection and impacts.

The Institute for Environmental Education Inc. was founded in 1987 at Woburn, Massachusetts. Today the Institute for Environmental Education Inc. continues to offer courses to individuals as well as companies, organizations and governmental agencies. While most of the classes are conducted on a monthly basis at the headquarters in Wilmington, Massachusetts, on typical client requirements, the Institute for Environmental Education Inc. also provides training seminars on-site seminars. Such facilities give the client the freedom to schedule courses as and when it is convenient for them, at the same time decreasing the cost of training by avoiding travel expenses for all the participants.

At the Institute for Environmental Education Inc., the staff and professionals involved have a vast amount of experience in conducting training, in coordination with a large number of organizations and companies. With a healthy combination of written exercises, oral exercises, videos, slides and group discussions, the learning needs of a vast range of target audience can be easily met.

There are a vast variety of courses available at the Institute for Environmental Education Inc., which varies in their duration and purpose. To begin with, some of the main courses include Environmental Remediator Program, which is designed for those individuals interested in entering the environmental field as a supervisor for an environmental contractor.

Other courses such as the Environmental Technician Program are designed for those individuals who possess moderate work experience and job skills. The Environmental, Health and Safety Studies program has also been designed for those individuals with a minimum experience and skill-set but looking for flexibility in choosing the program.

There is a different set of courses available at the Institute for Environmental Education Inc. for such students who are on a lookout to join the industry as a laborer. Known as the Environmental Remediator Laborer Program, students interested in this course will learn skills and begin to demonstrate competence in understanding the nature of the hazard along with various remediation techniques.

Apart from the vast array of courses, the Institute for Environmental Education Inc. also provides a wide range of other services as well. The most important amongst these include job placement assistance and provision of regular information to the clients.

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