Industry and the Environment

Do you recycle your newspapers? Do you always take a shopping bag with you when you go shopping, so that the shop doesn't waste plastic bags? If so, then you are a "Green" you are "environmentally conscious". That means that you are aware that human beings are using up the resources of the world too fast—and that to conserve the world's resources, we must "think green". Consumers all over the world are increasingly beginning to realise the need to buy "green products"—products that are economically and harmlessly produced, and harmlessly disposed of after use. There are also campaigns to encourage people to recycle glass, paper, plastic and metal. As a result of such campaigns, fewer resources are being wasted.

However, one thing is clear: without the cooperation of industry—big business—the world will not grow cleaner. For it is industry that turns raw materials into consumer products. Using modern technology, industry can create environmental disorder and confusion, wasting raw materials, and polluting the earth.

There are signs that industry is becoming increasingly aware of its power to preserve, or destroy, the environment. Industry has for some time tried to use natural resources more economically. For example, power stations have become much more efficient. As a result, they have become less wasteful in their use of resources.

However, in recent years, industry has come to worry much more about controlling the amount of pollution during production. Responsible companies are trying to reduce the amount of air pollution. Apart from releasing harmful gases, other problems include the discharge of heavy metals into rivers and the sea, and the difficulty of finding enough space to dispose safely of the world's rubbish.

Industry's task now is to find ways to reduce or eliminate forms of pollution. Increasingly the world will need products that, during their lifetime, do minimal damage to the planet, and that, at the end of their lives, can either be safely disposed of, or recycled—put to new uses. So, companies are now trying to ensure that rubbish is disposed of safely, or recycled where possible.

Why should any company start this revolution? There are many pressures for change: customers' tastes change, as the consumer starts to "think green". Customers vote with their wallets and purses, as they question what products involve poisonous gases in their manufacture, and what products are biologically harmful during their use, and after their useful life comes to an end.

More relevant perhaps in the long run, customers also have an influence on government: governments are now imposing stronger regulations on industry, and heavier penalties for polluting. Governments can make new laws about chemical discharges, tax the use of raw materials, and punish companies for polluting accidents. In short, society will and must demand cleaner and less wasteful industrial processes, cleaner products, and cleaner ways of disposing of these products, or recycling them.

To develop these processes, and invent cleaner products, will call for whole new. types of technology. The changes may well be enormous. What a fortune awaits the company that invents, say, a way of transporting people rapidly, safely and quietly, without discharging nasty gases, in a container that melts into the earth as soon as it reaches the end of its long life! The great engineering projects of the next century will not be the civil engineering of dams or bridges, but the bio-engineering of sewage works and garbage dumps. The star scientists will be those who find cheaper ways to dispose of plastics, or to clean up polluted soil. For far-sighted companies, the environment may turn out to be the biggest opportunity for enterprise and invention the industrial world has seen.