Preventive environmental protection

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With preventive environmental protection one tries to avoid waste, sewage, gaseous and energetic emissions from production. Starting points for this are, for example, internal improvement measures in industrial processes to avoid waste, to reduce the amount of wastewater or to optimize energy ( energy and material flow management ).

Organizational and technical improvements should help to make the best possible use of raw materials and energy flows and to avoid waste, wastewater and exhaust gases ( Cleaner Production , ÖKOPROFIT ). At the same time, it can be possible to reduce the operational use of materials and energy as well as waste. Many examples are known of how companies were able to save costs by introducing preventive environmental protection. The corresponding approaches are worked out through material and energy flow analyzes ( material flow analysis ). Many conceivable measures of preventive environmental protection, however, increase the economic costs.

Preventive environmental protection is characterized by the following differences compared to classic, "end-of-the-pipe" environmental protection:

  • In the past, emissions were seen as unavoidable because of the process. Accordingly, they must be controlled and treated and thus released into the environment as safely and legally as possible . Preventive environmental protection avoids emissions through technologies integrated in the manufacturing processes and increased utilization of raw materials and energy.
  • End-of-pipe environmental protection requires that treatment systems (e.g. wastewater treatment systems, dust filters, post-combustion systems) are added to the actual process if problems with environmentally hazardous emissions arise. According to the paradigm of production-integrated environmental protection , emission avoidance is an integral part of the plant design.
  • End-of-pipe environmental protection is considered expensive, burdens companies and ties up economic resources. Preventive environmental protection, on the other hand, is a potential opportunity to save raw materials and energy and thus gain a market advantage.
  • Old paradigm environmental issues are a matter for environmental and technology experts. Environmental protection in the preventive sense is the responsibility of all employees.
  • End-of-the-pipe environmental protection is based on technical measures. Preventive environmental protection also includes non-technical approaches such as organizational approaches and controlling.
  • Environmental protection in the classic sense is imposed on the company from outside by the authorities. In preventive environmental protection, a process is ideally subject to constant improvement in order to increasingly reduce the proportion of waste and emissions in the total consumption of materials and energy.

In summary, preventive environmental protection can be seen as a conceptual and procedural approach to a production method in which all process steps and all phases of the life cycle of a product are designed in such a way that risks for people and the environment are reduced or avoided as far as possible.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ J. Fresner, T. Bürki, H. Sittig: Resource efficiency in production - lower costs through cleaner production. Symposion Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-3-939707-48-6 .
  2. ↑ Definition from the "United Nation Environmental Program"

literature

  • Ali Yacooub, Johannes Fresner: Half is Enough - An Introduction to Cleaner Production . LCPC Press, Beirut 2006, ISBN 3-9501636-2-X .
  • J. Fresner, T. Bürki, H. Sittig: Resource efficiency in production - reducing costs through cleaner production. Symposion Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-3-939707-48-6 .
  • Organization For Economic Co-Operation And Development (OECD) (Ed.): Technologies For Cleaner Production And Products- Towards Technological Transformation For Sustainable Development. OECD, Paris 1995. (books.google.de)
  • Journal of Cleaner Production.