to be the closing of process leaks, by
means or by increasing process efficiency.
The bulk of N-compounds is used in agriculture, with its inherent inefficiency of processes and concurrent large losses to the environment. Closing of leaks therefore is, however necessary, extremely difficult. This in short characterizes the basic dilemma when formulating an adequate
strategy.
6. In theory, there are several ways to increase the efficiency. Since a substantial emission reduction is required in the EC, the options must be rather drastic. A first possibility is the industrialization of agriculture - large scale use of greenhouses with nutrient recycling, application of central manure treatment on a large scale and suchlike. A second direction is a production decrease to a level that allows the concurrent leaks to be below environmentally acceptable levels. A third equally drastic possibility is a substantial decrease of animal production as by far the most inefficient step in the agricultural system. None of those are viable options at this moment; this implies that problems related to losses of N-compounds from the food providing and consuming sectors inevitably remain partly unsolved for the present.
7. Collection and degradation seems the indicated waste treatment option for N-compounds. The degrading process may best be directed at converting all N-compounds to harmless atmospheric Reuse of N-waste as compost can be viewed as another possibility, however, again leading to leaks to the environment.
To the fragmentary, detailistic and sometimes contradictory measures and plans formulated on the various administrative levels, this approach has at least added one thing: a comprehensive overview. New is also the realization that nothing short of an agricultural revolution will enable us to conform to environmental quality standards (at least in the EC), due to the main of the need for and the impossibility of closing process leaks. On the level of the actual measures proposed, little can be concluded as to what's new: there is too much discrepancy in the levels of thinking. It may be expected that, as with cadmium, most measures out of the existing packages will turn out to be useful if applied in their proper place, as a part of an encompassing strategy.
6.7 Conclusions, discussion and recommendations for further investigation
The tentative answer to the main question as stated in section 6.3.2, 'would it be possible to define a set of "economic characteristics" for a substance that determine the "economic behav- iour", in analogy to the environmental characteristics of substances', is affirmative. It appears that economic characteristics can be formulated, based on physical/chemical and other substance properties on the one hand and on data related to the economic applications on the other hand. Also, it appears that these economic characteristics can be used to draw conclusions regarding the principle usefulness of general abatement measures in each specific case. A protocol as outlined in Section 6.4 and applied in Sections 6.5 and 6.6 could be used to obtain a first rough draft for any specific pollutants policy. Further investigations on this subject seem justified in the light of a potential substantial streamlining of pollutants policy.
The general management strategy outlines for cadmium and nitrogen compounds are sketchy. However, the general outlines have the distinct advantage of being comprehensive (including all stages of the economic life cycle), and appear to be avoiding more and less obvious mechanisms of problem shifting. On a general level, they make sense and therefore may serve as guidelines for a more detailed substance management measure package. It has proven possible, therefore, to make the connection between general, easily available substance data and the main directions for
its management. In order to translate the outlines into a real management strategy, more information is needed: a quantification as well as a qualification of the economic life cycle, an inventory of existing abatement techniques, and an estimate of the effectiveness of the various techniques and of the alternative waste streams that are generated. For the cases in section 6.4, these data were available from prior materials balance studies. Although these data have not been used directly, the knowledge no doubt has influenced especially the management outlines. A further test could be to conduct the same exercition for a substance without prior knowledge. An obvious step on the way to ization is to seek the opinions from other researchers in this field, both economists and environmentalists, on the viability of the approach. This may help to clarify the ideas and detect the flaws. A next step would be the definition and demarcation of the various parts:
- the definition of a useful and complete set of mutually exclusive economic characteristics related to the economic system in terms of in-, out- and of materials
- the specification of the data that will be needed in order to derive a substances economic characteristics
- the development of procedures to use the economic characteristics in the formulating of a materials management (in this article, the five-step protocol)
- the proper place of the protocol in the field of pollutants policy, product policy, process policy, resource policy etc.
Eventually, if more insight is gained in the possibilities and limitations of the approach, some fundamental research may be conducted. Translating the economic characteristics into problem causing potentials (again in analogy to the environmental problem potentials) is one possibility; conducting measurements, for example on waste/emissions ratios for substance life cycles, might be another.
6.8 References
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