Environmental terminology

The following briefly describes some common environmental terms:

Ecology

The study of the ways in which living organisms interact within the environment is known as ecology.

The relationships between living things and the environment are usually very complex. There are vast numbers of interconnected interactions between plant and animal living systems, compounded by many variable environmental factors.

Ecosystem

In order to understand this web of relationships, ecologists subdivide the natural world into zones called ecosystems. Anything from a rainforest to a pond can be regarded as an ecosystem. Even the area exposed when you turn over a stone in your back garden can be regarded as its own little ecosystem. The boundaries between ecosystems are arbitrary. It is vary rare to find a completely isolated ecosystem that has no interrelationships with other eco systems.

For an ecosystem to exist, four basic factors need to be present:

• an energy supply (usually sunlight);
• accessible nutrients;
• a suitable temperature range; and
• a suitable interface where the air, liquids and solid states meet.

The introduction of pollutants, or the depletion of natural resources, will alter the viability of an ecosystem. This may be incidental or possibly a deliberate means of controlling plant or animal populations, such as:

• acidification of lakes by ‘acid rain’ (incidental); or
• draining of swamps to eradicate malaria-carrying mosquitoes (deliberate).

For any ecosystem on earth to operate, it requires a source of energy.

Most ecosystems are ‘powered’ by sunlight, with the first living thing to harness incoming solar radiation being the green plant. By the process of ‘photosynthesis’ plants take in energy from sunshine, combining it with nutrients absorbed from the soil and build up their own tissues. In this way the green plant can be regarded as the ‘producer’ of most of the biomass on the planet.

Although the energy flowing along the food chain is ‘one-way’, materials move in cycles. They are neither created nor destroyed, but they do get changed from one form to another.

Environment

The environment can, in the widest sense, be described as ‘everything that is around us’, or, more specifically:

‘The surroundings in which an organism lives including air, water, land, climate and natural resources including other living things.’

The International Standards Organisation, in its document ISO 14001 uses a very similar definition, substituting the word ‘organisation’ for ‘organism’; ISO’s definition is:

‘Surroundings in which an organisation operates including air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, humans and their inter-relationships.’

See Environmental management

Sustainability/sustainable development

Sustainability aims to maintain economic and technological progress whilst leaving sufficient of the earth’s resources for future generations to enjoy.

Definition of sustainable development

‘Sustainable development means living on the earth’s income rather than eroding its capital. It means keeping the consumption of renewable resources within the limits of replenishment. It means handing down to successive generations both from the man made world and also the natural world.’

(source: This Common Inheritance, 1990 - a government strategy document on the environment published in September 1990).

See sustainable development

Agenda 21

A major event in the international sustainability debate was the UN Conference on the Environment and Development, The Earth Summit, held in Rio in 1992. One of the results of this conference was Agenda 21, a document of some forty chapters, which addressed the issue of sustainability for the next century. This document places great emphasis on the need for all sectors of society, including business and industry, to work towards sustainable development.

A number of local authorities in England and Wales have adopted Agenda 21 as part of their operations. Businesses may find their local council referring to Agenda 21 as a principle in the way they operate.

Pollution – releases into the environment

It is a global problem that many material by-products of human activity are being released into the environment. Some of these materials bring about changes that would not naturally occur.

definition of pollution

‘…the introduction by man of substances or energy into the environment that are liable to cause hazards to human health, harm to ecological systems, damage to structures or amenity, or interference with legitimate uses of the environment.’

(source: Holdgate 1979. NB. Sir Martin Holdgate is a distinguished authority on the natural world and was a former member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution)

Materials are usually released into the environment because they are apparently not of immediate value. In other words, for something to become a pollutant, it must be of human origin and also a waste material. There must be a link between the released material and some part of the environment which is changed for the worse or degraded in some way to cause pollution. This can be summed up by thinking in terms of:

Trans-boundary and long range pollution

Pollution can have a global dimension. For example, emissions of sulphur dioxide from one country may cause acid rain to fall in another. Another example is the way the global climate is possibly being influenced by release of carbon dioxide mainly from the most industrialised countries. The whole earth may be being affected whilst the pollution originates from a minority of countries. And it is only these countries that see the ‘benefits’ to consumers.

Resource depletion (renewable and non-renewable resources)

A resource is a material which is of use to human beings. Resources can be minerals or living things which can be taken from the environment and exploited.

Some natural resources are renewable – their reserves in the environment are naturally replenished either immediately (wind power for electricity generation) or in a relatively short time – at the very most one or two human generations (e.g. softwood from managed conifer plantations).

Non-renewable resources are not naturally replenished (at least not in the lifetime of several generations of human beings). Since natural reserves of such resources (such as fossil fuels) are being used up, the use of non-renewables can be described as living off the earth’s ‘capital’. Whereas using renewable resources is more like living off the earth’s ‘income’.

Waste

Any unwanted materials can be regarded as wastes. If these materials escape into the environment and cause damage, they are known as pollutants (see Pollutant above).

Some businesses may regard other organisations’ wastes as their own raw materials, but in most cases it will also legally be regarded as waste.

In English and European law, the definitions of waste are significantly different from one another (see waste management). The English definition, which is based on the type of premises that produced the material, is simple but in some cases apparently illogical. The European definition, which is based on a series of questions that the waste producers must ask themselves, is more logical overall, but can be difficult to interpret.

Proximity principle

When you consider the environmental cost of transporting waste (fuel use, exhaust emissions, noise, dust, traffic congestion, etc.), it makes sense to deal with it as close to its place of origin as possible (the material is processed in proximity to its source).

However, no-one wants to live next door to a landfill site or an incinerator. Also, the modern way of running such facilities (driven by European Directives) is to concentrate waste management processes into a few, highly engineered and highly regulated sites. This means that, in contravention of the proximity principle, wastes are being carried longer distances prior to final treatment or disposal, with all the additional environmental issues this entails.

Polluter pays

In the past, society has picked up much of the cost of wastes and pollution, e.g. unlike businesses, households still do not pay for their solid waste collection by weight or volume, rather they simply pay a proportion of their council tax. This bears no direct relation to the amount of waste they send to landfill. There is, therefore, no incentive for householders to reduce their waste output and the diligent recyclers subsidise the disposal costs of their less-careful neighbours.

We are now beginning to pay more of the true environmental cost of what we use particularly in the workplace, e.g. landfill tax (see emissions to land) and climate change levy (see emissions to air).

Precautionary principle

For some environmental issues, the scientific proof that links a pollutant to the problem it is alleged to cause is not conclusive and not accepted by everyone. However, the potential consequences are so catastrophic that the authorities take the view that something should be done to reduce or eliminate the pollutant, just in case. This way of approaching an environmental issue is known as adopting the precautionary principle.

For example, not everyone accepts that there is a link between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. In the UK, a majority of scientists and policy makers are convinced that the potential consequences of climate change are severe enough for government policies to be introduced aimed at limiting the release of so-called ‘greenhouse gasses’ (See Kyoto Protocol in emissions to air Emissions to air).

At source

This is a commonly used term when referring to pollution control. It is one of the basic requirements of an Environmental Policy in ISO14001 (See environmental management systems). Rather than identifying a pollutant and preventing its escape, a more efficient means of bringing about environmental improvement is to avoid creating the potential pollutant in the first place (e.g. instead of arriving at an ‘end-of-pipe’ solution, redesign the process to avoid producing the waste at source).

One of the main principles of ISO14001 is to ‘prevent pollution at source’ (see environmental management systems).

End of pipe

To find an end of pipe solution to an environmental problem is to cut the emission of the polluting material into the environment. The problem with this approach is that the offending material has been created and then has to be disposed of. While end of pipe is preferable to unrestricted emission into the environment, it is considered to be wasteful and the last resort in the hierarchy of pollution control (see Waste hierarchy in Waste minimisation).

Environmental quality

Some pollution control provisions administered by the authorities are aimed at controlling overall environmental quality as opposed to point of release. For example, the Environment Agency has powers to restrict what it allows to be released into river systems based on the quality of water already present. These are known as Water Quality Objectives (see emissions to water). Also, local authorities are able to restrict development and alter traffic flows based on the air quality in an area.

Point source

Release of pollution can be from discrete and, therefore, readily identified and measured locations, known as a point source. For example, combustion products from a single chimney or emissions to surface water from an outlet pipe.

Area source/linear source

Some pollutants are emitted into the environment over an area, e.g. landfill gases seeping from a site. Others are released over a line or front. For example, fertilizer run-off released where a field meets a riverbank. Another example would be noise from a stretch of motorway.