Today, environmental problems are discussed more than ever before. The industrial branch of the economy is one of the biggest polluters of the Earth’s atmosphere, and as such environmental pollution through industry should be reduced as much as possible. Pollution occurs in various ways – by releasing various unstable organic compounds, gaseous air pollutants or improper disposal of solid harmful waste. All these factors are proven to have a bad effect on the health of people and other living beings, environmental pollution and contamination of air and water suppliers.
Although most pollution has much greater long-term consequences, if several factors coincide, these consequences can be short-term and dangerous. Great smog in London, which happened between 5. and 9. December 1952 he killed, according to some estimates, at least eight, and at most up to twelve thousand people. The smog was created by a combination of very cold windless weather and the use of coal fireplaces by people to heat their homes. Fog created by the weather combined with smog from fireplaces, cars and chimneys. For five full days, a cloud of fog and smog paralyzed London, the entire transport infrastructure was stopped except for the London Underground. Mostly children and the elderly and people with chronic lung diseases died.
This event prompted the British Parliament to transition from coal as the primary fuel to gas, oil and electricity. Similar things are happening today, too large a world population and the needs that go with it are the cause of more and more uncontrolled discharge of industrial waste into the environment, and a transition to clean energy sources is necessary.
The task of producers is to eliminate negative by-products from the industrial sector as much as possible.
Why this is so is quite simple. It is common knowledge how many bad consequences the excessive release of waste into the environment brings. The most dangerous is global warming, which is caused by the excessive release of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and most of these emissions come from industrial production.
Air pollution can be defined as “the introduction of substances or energy, caused directly or indirectly by humans, into the air resulting in harmful effects such as endangering human health, harming living beings and ecosystems and material possessions, and interfering with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment”. The biggest pollutants of the atmosphere today are nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, particulate gases (dust) and heavy metals such as mercury or lead. In addition to the directly responsible industry (especially the coal-fired industry), major pollution is caused by transport, the agricultural sector and waste incineration.
More and more industries are switching their facilities to clean energy sources, and the rest of the companies should follow this example. Plants that use natural gas or coal as fuel contribute to water and air pollution all over the world. These pollutants cause breathing difficulties, neurological problems, and increase the likelihood of heart attacks and cancer, among other chronic health problems. The biggest users of fossil fuels are paper and concrete manufacturers. In the best case, solar energy and wind energy would be used as energy, but the mechanism is still far from that. It would be acceptable to use biomass energy or geothermal energy, which emit some pollutants, but in a significantly smaller amount than natural gas and coal.
Air pollution and climate change are closely related, which has led to international legal regulations. Despite the laws, industries that are not yet switching to cleaner energy sources are successfully circumventing them. According to a 2002 study by Andrew King and Michael Lenox. even 30% of industries underestimate measures to reduce waste. Air pollution in Europe alone is responsible for 400,000 premature deaths per year. Poor implementation of laws and weak enforcement, despite good and strict laws, are the main culprits for European cities leading in air pollution, despite countries in transition such as India and China relying on industry as their main economic sector. It is assumed that by 2030 air pollution will decrease, but then it will slow down exponentially.
The best recent example of the inconsistency of international laws is the Volkswagen scandal of 2015. (“Dieselgate”), where it was discovered, by the US Environmental Protection Agency, that VW deliberately programmed diesel engines to detect when they were in a test environment and thus change performance to better meet emissions (nitrogen oxide) regulations. This has come about because, despite both the US and the EU having demanding standards, the US is more focused on nitrogen oxides, while the EU is more concerned about carbon dioxide. Diesel-powered cars are produced only by European manufacturers, which therefore required “adaptation” for the foreign market. Such cars in a real environment produced up to 40 times higher emissions of nitrogen oxides than is allowed in the USA.
Furthermore, a good case would be the use of technologies that destroy pollutants at their source. Such a step would be a great start for facilities that do not have the ability to switch to “greener” energy sources at the same time. There are different methods for different pollutants and not all mechanisms are equally effective for all pollutants. One of the ways is catalytic oxidation – using very high temperatures and chemical catalysts, pollutants are separated into compounds that can be harmlessly released into the air.
One of the methods that is increasingly used is the use of microorganisms or fungi to clean heavy metals or organic compounds that are difficult to degrade. This mostly applies to developing countries, where water pollution per mass unit is much higher than in developed countries. In addition to the developing countries themselves (India and China, for example again), many developed countries move their production to countries that do not yet have so many legal regulations related to environmental protection. This applies mostly to the mining industry, where waste storage is expensive and pollutants are highly toxic.
Perhaps the most important way to prevent pollution is the development of more effective production planning techniques. The imbalance of supply and demand has a great impact on the environment and its pollution – if a product is produced for which there is little demand, the plant unnecessarily contributes to air pollution. Although political and economic games play a big role in this case, in an ideal world manufacturers around the world would find a way to balance product supply and demand and keep unnecessary factory activities to a minimum and unwanted products out of the supply chain.
It was already mentioned in the text that transport is one of the biggest polluters today. It is generally accepted that a shift to the mass use of electric cars would solve this problem. Electric cars are getting cheaper, the cheapest ones cost around 30,000 US dollars (about 190,000 HRK), with a range of up to 250 kilometers. Although most of these city cars are available to the wider market, there are already those whose ranges go over 800 kilometers, although these models are still out of the price range of most people.
Despite all of the above, Forbes magazine investigated whether electric cars are really more environmentally friendly than cars with internal combustion engines. The biggest problem is the production of batteries, which require a lot of rare metals, the extraction of which causes carbon emissions. One comparative study found that China’s electric car production infrastructure produces up to 60% more CO2 during production than cars with internal combustion engines, although this CO2 emission can be reduced by up to 66% by switching to an American or European style of production. As such, the emissions of the two types of transport are equal or slightly leaning towards electric cars. Despite this, in the long term, electric cars have a huge advantage because they last a long time and, once produced, no longer affect the level of CO2 in the air.
With the advancement of technology, it is to be expected that electric cars will progress and become more efficient and cheaper, considering that more and more people are starting to turn to this type of transport. By turning the economy towards electric cars, the production infrastructure, more efficient production techniques, recycling options will also progress and the need for material mining will be reduced.
The world is already used to production as it is, and the economic profit since the first industrial revolution is too great for manufacturers to take risks and dare to introduce critical changes in order not to lose that profit. However, reducing pollution would also reduce the pressure on the health care system and reduce sick leave and poor productivity. Estimates from the World Economic Forum say the world could lose 3.8 billion working days a year by 2060. if the trend continues at this pace.
The consequences of economic losses are already visible today. The global economy is losing 225 billion dollars a year due to lost working days. In addition, traffic jams often interfere with daily operations, while poor air quality affects the performance and motivation of employees, even if the work is done in the office. A growing problem is the impossibility of finding labor in cities that are polluted above average.
All in all, manufacturers should take air pollution more and more seriously. If not for the rest of the world, then for yourself.