ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Environmental Problems - Causes & Sustainability

Dr. Brajesh Kumar Dubey

Associate Professor
Environmental Engineering and Management Division
Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
 Evolution of Sustainability Concept

The series of events that ignited the

Environmental Movement
(From Environmental protection to goal of
Sustainability)

•1948 Donora smog

The smog that blanketed the small town of
Donora, Pennsylvania in October 1948
caused at least 21 deaths and ultimately
resulted in the passage of the early version
of Clean Air Act of 1963.
Must read
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deadly-donora-smog-1948-
spurred-environmental-protection-have-we-forgotten-lesson-
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180970533/ https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/deadly-1948-donora-smog-launched-clean-air-movement.htm
 • 1962 : Marine biologist
Rachel Carson publishes
Silent Spring, calling
attention to the threat
of toxic chemicals
(especially pesticides) to
people and the
environment.
• Carson is widely credited
with banning DDT.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/05/01/how-does-the-science-of-rachel-
carsons-silent-spring-stand-up-more-the-50-years-later/
•How ‘Silent Spring’ Ignited the Environmental Movement (Must read)
Link
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-
movement.html
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 Cuyahoga River Fire

The 1969 Cuyahoga River fire

helped spur an avalanche of water
pollution control activities, resulting
in the Clean water act and the
creation of the
federal Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA)- 1970 -1972

https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/cuyahoga-river-fires/

How a burning river helped create the clean water act

Read
https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-
helped-create-the-clean-water-act/ 4
 1976
The Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act (RCRA) is
enacted by Congress
-with primary goals of protecting
human health and the environment
from the potential hazards of
waste disposal, conserving energy
and natural resources, reducing
the amount of waste generated,
and ensuring that wastes are
managed in an environmentally
sound manner.

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 The Love Canal Tragedy

One of the most famous and

important examples of
groundwater pollution in the U.S.
is the Love Canal tragedy in
Niagara Falls, New York.

1980 :Congress passed the

Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation, and
Liability Act (CERCLA), better
known as the Superfund Act. Love
Canal became the first entry on the
list
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https://blogs.roosevelt.edu/mbryson/2013/12/01/love-canal-a-still-unfolding-legacy-of-a-toxic-waste-
 1983

- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. National

Academy of Sciences release reports concluding that the build-up of
carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” in the Earth's
atmosphere will likely lead to global warming.

- Reports spark conflict; greenhouse warming becomes a factor in mainstream

politics for the fist time.

# Data on CO2 and Global warming will be talked about in later lectures

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 1984

- An estimated 10,000 people

are killed and many more
injured when Union Carbide's
pesticide plant in Bhopal, India,
leaks 40 tons of methyl
isocyanate gas into the air and
sends a cloud of poison into the
surrounding city of 1 million. https://www.livemint.com/Politics/sBzgTl9ogcYcRJPDLVuj1L/32-years-after-
the-Bhopal-gas-tragedy-govt-apathy-intensifi.html

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 1987

The Montreal Protocol

- The World Commission on Environment and

Development publishes Our Common Future (The
Brundtland Report) [the mission of
the Brundtland Commission is to unite countries
to pursue sustainable development together.]

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 1992

- The Convention on Climate Change sets

nonbinding carbon dioxide reduction goals
for industrial countries (to 1990 levels by
2000).
- UN Conference on Environment and
Development (Earth Summit), in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil.

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 1995

• IPCC, releases a report concluding that “the

balance of evidence suggests that there is a
discernible human influence on global climate.

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 1997

- The Kyoto Protocol mandates

that industrial countries cut
their carbon dioxide emissions
by 6 to 8 percent from 1990
levels by 2008–2012.

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 2000
Eight Millennium Development Goals (until 2015)

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https://www.mdgmonitor.org/outline-of-the-mdgs-notable-challenges/
How successful were they?

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2017/01/11/how-successful-were-the-millennium-development-goals/
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 2002

- World Summit on Sustainable

Development in Johannesburg,
South Africa, agree on a
limited plan to reduce poverty
and protect the environment.

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 2012

- World Summit on Sustainable

Development in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil.
- Major Objectives
- poverty reduction
- clean energy
- Sustainable development

Major Outcomes
- Working group on sustainable
development goals

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 2015

- The 2015 United Nations Climate Change

Conference, COP 21 or CMP 11 was held in
Paris, France

Major Outcomes
- participating 196 countries agreed to
reduce emissions, carbon output and to do
their best to keep global warming to well
below 2 degrees C.
- Sustainable development goals

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Source: https://www.iberdrola.com/environment/international-agreements-on-climate-change
Imp. Environmental rules & Acts in India

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 Major Environmental statutes in India

1. Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974

2. Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Cess Act, 1977
3. Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981
4. Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
 Major Environmental statutes in India

• The Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemicals

Rules, 1989 replaced by Hazardous Waste (Management,
Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008
• The Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 1991
• The Chemical Accidents ( Emergency, Planning, Preparedness,
and Response) Rules, 1996
• The Biomedical Waste Management Rules, 2016
• Recycled Plastic manufacture and uses (Amendment) Rules, 2003
 Major Environmental statutes in India

• The Plastics Waste Management Rules, 2016

• The Solid Wastes Management Rules, 2016
• The Hazardous & Other Waste Management Rules 2016
• The Batteries (Management and Handling) Rules, 2001
• The Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) (Amendment)
Rules, 2000
Path forward

Once there is an intention to pursue

sustainability , there is a clear need
to identify an approach to problem
solving that is evolved from previous
approaches which had not
systematically incorporated triple
bottom line consideration.

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How to move from discussion to operation?

Operationalizing Sustainability
Two broad classes
I. Top down
II. Bottom up

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 Towards sustainability goal

Two frameworks
1. Life cycle thinking
2. System Thinking
--life cycle thinking is focused on material and energy
flows and the subsequent impacts
--while systems thinking can also capture the relationship
of political, cultural, social, and economic considerations,
and potential feedbacks between these considerations
and material and energy flows.
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Life Cycle Thinking
• Systemic framework that
takes a holistic view of
the production and
consumption of a product
or service and assesses
its impacts on the
environment through the
entire life cycle.
• It goes beyond focusing
on a specific site or
product.

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 What is a circular economy ?

• A circular economy is an alternative to a traditional

linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we
keep resources in use for as long as possible,
extract the maximum value from them whilst in
use, then recover and regenerate products and
materials at the end of each service life.
• A circular economy is restorative and regenerative
by design. This means that materials constantly
flow around a ‘closed loop’ system, rather than
being used once and then discarded. As a result,
the value of materials is not lost by being thrown
away.

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(Source: sustainability.com)
Circular Economy

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Source: https://erp-recycling.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ERP-Circular-Economy-Roles-and-
Responsibilities.pdf
Circular Economy

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(Source: ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy)
Why is Life Cycle Thinking important ?
--Because different
environmental impacts can
occur during different
stages.
Example1:
--Some materials may have an
adverse environmental
consequence when
extracted or processed,
but may be relatively
benign in use and easy to
recycle.
-- Aluminum is such a
material. On one hand,
smelting of aluminum ore is
very energy intensive. This
is one reason aluminum is a
favored recycled metal
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Source: https://www.hulamin.com/about/aluminiums-lifecycle
Example 2:
--An automobile will
create the bulk of
its environmental
impact during the
use life stage, not
only because of
combustion of
fossil fuels, but
also because of
runoff from roads
and the use of
many fluids during
operation
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Example 3:
--Buildings, though a vast
amount of water,
aggregate, chemicals,
and energy goes into the
production of
construction materials,
transport of these
items to the job site,
and construction of a
building, the vast
amount of water and
energy occurs after
occupancy, during the
operation life stage of
the building.
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Life cycle analysis: IL vs CFL vs LED
Without Life Cycle
Thinking.
• If reducing the amount
of energy, and
subsequently carbon
emissions, associated
with lighting is only
considered
Trade off

4 mg Hg per bulb

Environmental and human

concern 36
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/lca_factsheet_apr2013.pdf
 Life cycle analysis: IL vs CFL vs LED

Life
Cycle
Thinking

* Extra cost of LED is repaid in

Energy efficient and no
long term (Longer operation
“Hg”
time) Trade off

More innovation is needed Disposal 37

 How to solve such trade off?

•Life cycle thinking supports the goal of improving the overall

environmental performance of an engineering design and not simply
improving a single stage or endpoint while shifting burdens elsewhere
in the life cycle

•To effectively capture these impacts across the entire life cycle
of the product, process, or system, one must consider the
environmental impacts for the entire life cycle through an LCA.

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

An LCA is a sophisticated
way of examining the total
environmental impact
through every life cycle
stage.

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 Systems Thinking
Life cycle and system thinking applied to
Biofuel • Systems thinking is the process of
understanding how things influence
one another within a whole.
•Without LC and system thinking
frameworks, significant and varied
environmental impacts across the life
cycle cannot be understood

Example : “greener” fuel can have

significant and varied environmental
impacts across the life cycle.

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Mihelcic et al., 2014
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Importance of design and innovation in advance sustainability

Design is the
engineering stage
where the greatest
influence can be
achieved in terms
of sustainable
outcomes.

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Source: Mihelcic et al., 2014
 Degrees of Freedom and Sustainable Design

Three design solution

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 Measuring Sustainability

Indicators :
--Something that points to an issue or condition. Its purpose
is to show you how well a system is working.
--A sustainability indicator measures the progress toward
achieving a goal of sustainability.

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 Efficiency factor

• Several quantitative sustainability metrics are heavily

utilized by engineers. One of these metrics is the
efficiency factor (or E factor), which is a measure of
material efficiencies, that is the waste generation for
materials.

E factor = (Ʃ kg inputs / Ʃ kg products)

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• Calculate the E factor for the desired product,
given the following chemical production process:

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 Policies Driving Sustainability

1. Regulations ( Example: EPR, Banning)

2. Voluntary Programs ( Eco labeling and
Preferential purchasing).

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Sustainable Society

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 2016

Paris Agreement
-The Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) replaced the MDGs in
2016.

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Three dimensions of sustainability

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Source: https://medium.com/@zeyu007 2014
Three dimensions of sustainability

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Source: https://www.unssc.org/news-and-insights/blog/sustainable-development-what-there-know-and-why-should-we-care/
5 Ps of sustainable development

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Source: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/558868634991524880/
Sustainable development goals- Current status

SDGs – Global & Indian status

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Source: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020.pdf;
https://in.one.un.org/page/sustainable-development-goals/
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Source: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020.pdf
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Sufficiency philosophy adopted for SDGs

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Source: https://thailand.opendevelopmentmekong.net/topics/sustainable-development-goals/
Indian strategy for achieving the SDGs

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Source: https://niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2019-01/NITI-Aayog-SDG-Presentation-to-States.pdf
THANK YOU
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