The Brazilian case-study
Case study: An analysis of the state of Brazilian chemical industry in 1998 revealed that the actually employed technologies were transferred in a period where industrial waste generation, treatment and disposal represented an important part of total production costs. A not too strict legislation at that time allowed inconsideration of externalities and poor environmental concern. Environmental management was restricted to monitoring of cost and volume of waste disposed in observance of sanitary inspection rules, without any regard to insufficient process performance.
On the micro-environment scale, action was limited to programs of accident prevention and use of individual protection equipment, devoid of adequate monitoring of occupational health and programs for minimizing inherent process risk. But rising concerns with the environmental and health impacts of processes have led to stricter rules and monitoring parameters with regard to working conditions and waste disposal. In response, industries started to rethink their production processes with an eye to eliminate or minimize industrial process failures. As such, new and easily established parameters were required to subsidize the decision maker's choice of best way to allocate resources for enhance the environmental performance of process.
Required:
Question1. Explain fully the potential health hazards associated with industrial waste as applied to Brazilian chemical industry.
Question2. Describe the physical, chemical and biological transformations throughout solid waste management as applied to the above case-study. Give two illustrations in each case to support your answer.
Question3. With such rising concerns in environmental and health impacts as mentioned in case-study, what are the common measures which might have been implemented for a sound waste management system?
Question4. Waste minimization by industry and commerce, comprising source reduction, might involve a number of different operational activities. Give four detailed examples of changes in packaging involving waste minimization.