Question

Please solve the question

Compare two products from an ecological perspective. Do a simplified environmental audit.

Answer 1

Ecology of products studies the flows of materials that result from making, using and discarding various products and develops methods for minimizing the negative effects to the environment, such as the use of materials, pollution and production of waste.

Twenty years ago ecology of products and production was understood as a study of discrete problems concerning how to find a substitute for one or another scant raw material or "handle" away a sporadic local accumulation of waste. Today these local problems have grown in number and extent so that we now regard sustainable ecology as one of the principal and permanent requirements to all production.

The areas where industrial ecology now operates, can be grouped as follows:

• minimizing the use of material and energy,
• the substitution of materials with better environmental performance, and
• the recovery of materials.

Ecological Design

Design in itself has no ecological dimension, but its impact on the manufacture and use of products is immense. Decisions in the design stage restrict seriously the scope of possible changes later on. Designers should "design for the environment", that is, to consider not just the manufacture but all the later phases in the life cycle of the new product including its use and disposal.

Already the first concepts for a new product should include an examination whether there could be an alternative to fabricating a physical product, in other words whether there is a different, ecologically better way to deliver the same function to customers through a service or a product-service combination. For example, buying a car to get from home to workplace becomes unnecessary if the work can be done at home, and some products can be substituted with non material services like e-mail and the virtual functions of internet and the personal computer.

Choice of material is a prominent question where the designer has great influence when selecting the materials and components of products, including the use of reprocessed materials. Clever design can reduce the amount of materials needed in a product (dematerialization). For instance, an inherently rigid three-dimensional shape for the product can allow using lower gauge metal sheet in its construction.

Sometimes it will be possible to use a new, environmentally better material for a purpose, sometimes it is enough to refine the processing of an old material. In any case, the optimal material should perform the function longer, be processed less wastefully, or be acquired with less waste.

Ecology of Manufacture:

The science of industrial ecology (IE) aims at improving knowledge and decisions in the various industries about use of materials, reduction of waste, and prevention of pollution. It tries to build up comprehensive accounts of the flow of materials in the economy, descriptions of the environmental dimensions of industrial systems, means for analysis and design of environmentally good systems and products, and alternatives to disposal for wastes.

Just two decades ago, Industrial Ecology could be viewed as a discussion forum for speculative ethical questions which practical people in the industry could choose either to regard or to ignore. Today, the increasing consumption of material and energy, and the expanding pollution, have often grown into compelling imperatives which the industry cannot anymore leave without notice. Accordingly, these questions have attracted more and more research. This has gradually generated a consistent theory of industrial ecology which in turn can be used to assist the prevention of further industrial catastrophes.

The purpose of research is to minimize the waste generated during product manufacture, simplify the reuse of products and their components, and minimize energy and material consumption and other negative impacts of product use. The stage of product assembly offers many opportunities for reducing the use of materials, particularly toxic ones, and minimizing wastes.

Immense amounts of metals and other raw materials are continually lost to productive use as a result of their dilution or minute concentrations in wastes. Metals can be found in rinse waters from metal finishers, stack emissions and pollution control sludge from coal fired power plants, and baghouse dusts from metal smelters among others. In a national analysis of metals concentrations in waste streams in the USA, researchers have found that metal concentrations are frequently higher in waste stream compared with those in typical ore bodies. Large amounts of valuable resources are annually discarded as a result of their being viewed as "wastes" and not as sources of raw material. It is clear that enhanced materials recovery could often not only provide environmental benefits but as well economic ones directly to the manufacturer.

A range of technical approaches exist for recovering metals from wastes including electrolytic techniques (common in hydrometallurgical processes used for primary materials) and acidic leaching (familiar to mining engineers).

The ecological quality of manufacture is often measured in either the amount of wastes per produced unit, or as productivity which is measured as the quotient:

(produced quantity) / (quantity of used material).

The appellation eco-efficiency is also sometimes used for the above quotients.

When appropriate, the energy consumption and emissions of transportation of materials and products have to be added to those of manufacture.

Ecology of Product Use:

Life Cycle Analysis can be defined as a way to evaluate the environmental effects associated with any given industrial activity from the initial gathering of raw materials from the earth until the point at which all residuals are returned to the earth. As compared to the mere study of manufacturing, its calculations are more complicated, but in return we gain the ability to examine the overall optimum of the product and the trade-offs between the phases of its life. We can thus calculate e.g. how rewarding it will be to spend more in manufacture and get a better ecological performance during use and disposal of the product.

In life cycle analysis a particular statistic, Material Input per Service Unit (MIPS), is sometimes used. It is roughly the inverse to the productivity of material, but the difference is that it also includes the materials and energy used up during the use and discarding phases of the product. Productivity of material could be measured from the model on the right as the ratio of the quantities C to A, while MIPS would be equal to (A + B) / D.

The benefit from the product, marked as D in the diagram, must be measured with suitable service units, which have to be defined specifically for each type of product. For example, for person cars they would be equal to number of people times length of travel; for laundering machines, a kilogram of cleaned clothes. The service unit of an utensil can simply be using it once.

The advantage of calculating with MIPS is that we can evaluate not only products but also the services or benefits that these products are giving to the user. For example, instead of comparing just various models of cars, we can include in the comparison also other means of transport like bus and train. This helps us point out and evaluate new alternatives which may be radically better environmentally than the old conventional products.

When calculating material input per service unit, the following five sorts of material input have to be kept apart, because there is no means of adding them up:

• Not replenishable raw materials,
• Replenishable raw materials,
• Soil to be moved,
• Water, and
• Air.

The unit of measurement is always kg or ton.

In the case that it proves difficult to cut down the ecological inputs, there is another possibility to improve the ecological efficiency of a product: life extension. It means keeping a product, with all its parts and materials, in productive use for a longer lifespan, slowing the flow of materials from extraction to disposal.

Recycling:

The final target for an ecologically healthy industrial system is the cycling of virtually all of the materials it uses. The amount of waste to the environment should be as small as possible. This is possible only with widespread reuse of materials.

For mixtures of material the challenge for recovery lies in separation. Manual assorting of waste materials is costly and inefficient. Automated methods for materials separation are capable of identifying the various materials by exploiting disparities in physical and chemical properties. Taking advantage of differences in particle size, density, and magnetic and optical properties of materials in municipal solid waste allows automatic machines to separate out organic, and ferrous and non-ferrous metals from waste streams. Sensor arrays and high speed computing capability now allow for real time identification and separation of different plastic resins in mixed waste streams.

Designing products to ease disassembly is of considerable practical importance to enable recovery. The less labour and capital equipment necessary for disassembly, the more economically attractive recovery becomes.

An environmental audit is a type of evaluation intended to identify environmental compliance and management system implementation gaps, along with related corrective actions. In this way they perform an analogous (similar) function to financial audits. There are generally two different types of environmental audits: compliance audits and management systems audits. Compliance audits tend to be the primary type in the US or within US-based multinationals.

Environmental compliance audits:

As the name implies, these audits are intended to review the site's/company's legal compliance status in an operational context. Compliance audits generally begin with determining the applicable compliance requirements against which the operations will be assessed. This tends to include federal regulations, state regulations, permits and local ordinances/codes. In some cases, it may also include requirements within legal settlements.

Compliance audits may be multimedia or programmatic. Multimedia audits involve identifying and auditing all environmental media (air, water, waste, etc.) that apply to the operation/company. Programmatic audits (which may also be called thematic or media-specific) are limited in scope to pre-identified regulatory areas, such as air.

ISO 14001:

ISO 14001 is a voluntary international standard for environmental management systems ("EMS"). ISO 14001:2004 provides the requirements for an EMS and ISO 14004 gives general EMS guidelines. An EMS meeting the requirements of ISO 14001:2004 is a management tool enabling an organization of any size or type to:

1. Identify and control the environmental impact of its activities, products or services;
2. Improve its environmental performance continually, and
3. Implement a systematic approach to setting environmental objectives and targets, to achieving these and to demonstrating that they have been achieved.

Organizations implementing ISO 14001 usually seek to obtain certification by independent Certification Bodies. Certification indicates that the documentation, implementation and effectiveness of the EMS conform to the specific requirements of ISO 14001. This standard is currently being updated to include elements of including a lifecycle perspective and including top management amongst other changes. The draft (DIS) standard ISODIS 14001:2014 is currently the draft standard applicable until the ISO 14001:2015 standard is finalised and published.