Introduction to Sustainable Development

Introduction to Sustainable Development

• Sustainable development involves meeting the needs of the present without compromising future generations.
• Sustainable development goals include no poverty, zero hunger, good health, quality education, gender equality, and clean water.
• Sustainability focuses on human well-being, environmental well-being via ecosystems, and economic well-being.
• The pillars of sustainability include social measures (social performance and quality of life), environmental factors (energy, pollution, and emissions), and economic health (business environment).

Human Activities and Their Impact

• Deforestation and landscape alteration, changes to waterways (flooding, dams), built environment changes due to deposition and chemical attacks.
• Chemical changes lead to altered soil and sediment, increased concentration of emitted substances, with secondary reactions such as ozone in urban areas.
• Biological changes impact plants, fish, animals, and microorganisms, potentially leading to species succession, extinction, migration, or disease, as well as injury/illness from chemical exposure.

Environmental Issues and Sustainability

• Environmental crises in today's world: rapid urban growth with poor planning, resource reduction, pollution, decline in biological diversity, increased poverty, and global environmental changes.
• Sustainable Development reuses/circulates waste, minimizes material use, prevents hazardous releases and minimizes energy consumption and waste heat.
• Resilience is a system's ability to tolerate disruption while maintaining its function/structure and dealing with change, which is vital to sustainability.
• A sustainability strategy defines long-term objectives, explores solutions, and analyzes them using indicators.
• Resilience strategy views change as normal and develops adaptive ability to react to shocks in the environment.

Engineering and Environmental Change

• Carrying capacity is the number of individuals a system can support.
• The ecological footprint measures the stress on an ecosystem by an individual/group.
• The tipping point is a critical threshold beyond which irreversible change occurs.
• Engineers address problems related to tech advancement and bear responsibility for activities impacting environmental change.
• Anthropogenic environmental change includes land use and changes induced by emissions/residues from products/industrial processes.
• Environmental concerns relate to atmospheric emissions, water pollution, solid waste, and natural resource depletion.
• Material selection involves environmentally preferable materials; Manufacturing processes involve waste release in air, water, and solid forms.
• Energy use affects environmental quality, with fossil fuels as the primary energy source.
• Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers a holistic view of how engineering decisions affect the environment.
• Environmental legislation includes the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (1999) for pollution prevention, the Fisheries Act (1985) for water protection, and the Impact Assessment Act (2019).

Air Pollution Overview

• Pollution from natural sources, organic sources, and synthetic chemicals.
• Air pollution, soil pollution, and water pollution are categories of pollution.
• The Clean Air Act mandates National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for common air pollutants that harm health, environment and property.

Specific Air Pollutants

• Primary pollutants are emitted directly from a source, secondary pollutants form when they react in the atmosphere.
• Ozone forms when hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides combine in sunlight.
• Nitrogen dioxide forms as nitrogen oxide combines with oxygen, acid rain forms when sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides react in the air.
• Stationary fuel combustion sources, industrial processes, highway vehicles, and non-road mobile sources are sources of pollutants.
• Particulate Matter (PM) consists of minute solid or liquid particles; PM10 or PM2.5 refer to particle size.
• PM is toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and its size affects the scope and severity of impacts.
• PM10 penetrates deeply into the lung, while PM2.5 travel further and remain suspended longer.
• Particulate matter causes respiratory diseases and various forms of heart disease from industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust, and smoke.
• Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are focus pollutants from fuel combustion, causing lung irritation, respiratory illness, and heart disease, and also form acid rain and contribute to PM2.5.
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are carcinogenic and contribute to PM.
• VOCs can be found in the transportation sector, products containing solvents, industrial processes, and residential wood burning.
• Ground-level ozone (O3) is a secondary pollutant formed when VOCs react with NOx in sunlight, is a component of smog, damages lungs, reduces plant resilience, and corrodes materials.
• Carbon Monoxide (CO) is an odorless, colorless gas formed from incomplete combustion such as in vehicles/wood heating.
• CO reduces oxygen in blood, causing fatigue and death.
• Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) is a colorless gas from fossil fuel combustion, causing eye and respiratory irritation and is a precursor to acid rain.
• High levels of lead (Pb) affects the nervous system, and reproductive and cardiovascular systems from leaded gasoline, smelters, batteries, and incinerators.

Air Toxics and Acid Deposition

• Air toxics include gases (hydrogen and chloride), compounds (asbestos), and elements (cadmium, mercury, and chromium).
• Air toxic health impacts include cancer, nervous issues, defects; Acid rain form when SO2/NOx react in the atmosphere.
• Wet deposition includes rain/snow/fog, while dry deposition includes dust/gas, both harmful. Acid rain has a PH<5

Ozone Depletion and Greenhouse Gases

• Ozone depletion occurs from human-produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that release chlorine when broken down by radiation.
• Effects on materials include corroding metal, deteriorating paint/stone, increasing infrastructure costs, and damaging cultural heritage
• The Montreal Protocol of 1987 aimed to phase out ozone-depleting substances, resulting in 90-95% reduction by 2005.
• Key greenhouse gases (GHGs) are CO2, CH4, N2O, and fluorinated gases, from combustion that trap heat in the atmos.
• Global Warming Potential (GWP) compares the climate impact of gases to CO2 over 100 years, where C02 is 1, methane is 21, nitrous Oxide is 310, etc.
• Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) is a standard to convert all GHG emissions into CO2-equivalents by multiplying the mass of gas i by its global warming potential.

Water Stress and Pollution

• Water stress is defined as the ratio of water consumption to water supply.
• Water pollution is caused by releasing substances into water sources; pollutants interfere with ecosystems, including pathogens, wastes, toxins, and heat addition.
• Pathogens from sewage, runoff, and malfunctioning systems cause typhoid, cholera, and risks to vulnerable populations.
• Organic waste reduces oxygen levels; organic wastes include proteins, carbs, and nucleic acids from sewage and runoff.
• Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) measures oxygen consumed by microorganisms to break down material.
• Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) measures oxygen needed for chemical oxidation: High BOD/COD = bad water.

Water Quality & Nutrients

• Key nutrients include nitrogen and phosphorus, harmful in excess and from agriculture, stormwater, and fossil fuel use.
• Health and environmental risks Nitrogen in drinking water is harmful and excess atmospheric gas deposits into forests, soils, waterways.
• Total Suspended Solids (TSS) measure suspended particles that reduce light/photosynthesis and increase water temperature decrease oxygen concentration.
• Optimal aquatic pH is 6.5-8.0, with acidic water mobilizing harmful contaminants.
• Causes of pH change include acid rain and contaminant with pH calculated based on a logarithmic scale and hydrogen concentration.

Ocean Acidification and Oil Pollution

• Ocean acidification decreases species like; Mollusks, Corals, Plankton w/corals vulnerable to storms.
• Oil & Grease Pollution is regulated by the EPA regulated spills from oil storage tanks, not exploration waste which includes the Exxon Valdez (1989) and BP Deepwater Horizon (2010) spills.
• Priority Pollutants from EPA includes heavy metals Volatile hydrocarbons and pesticides with impacts like Legionnaires' disease & flint water.
• Nonconventional Pollutants include contaminates not classified as conventional where color, salt, and thermal pollution is high.

Eutrophication and Land/Soil Issues

• Eutrophication contains high contents of nitrogen, phosphorus, algal booms, and increased BOD, which in turn causes low concentrations of O2 .
• Soil pollution is from pollutants that pollute into water with two waste categories of hazardous, nonhazardous.

Hazardous Waste

• Hazardous Solid Waste regulated by RCRA (1976) and is classified by biological, chemcial and physical properties with testing conditions like: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, toxicity.
• Nonhazardous Waste also known as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) includes: Food waste, yard waste, plastics, packaging with recycling rates improving but suboptimal.
• Waste-to-energy options focus on : fuel production vs. heat & electricity generation, efficiency and enviromental impacts.

Municipal Waste Management

• Municipal Waste Management landfilling, growing/ recycling, composting, incineration are options where waste is incinerated to generate electricity, heat that has enviromental concerns (air pollution).
• Radioactive Pollution is defined from liquid, gas, soils where natural/ human causes create medical issues, and birth defects.
• Chernobyl safety tests with reactor 4 led to disaster with causes, errors and issues which affects Europe's food, soil , water.
• Waste types include high level, transuranic, low, and uranium tillings that create cancer, birth/gential defects.

Radioactive Waste Managment

• Requires permanent isolation due to: Intense radioactivity that causes issues, organ failure with no current solution, a geological burial.
• Transuranic Waste contains elements heavier than cranium with weapons and chemical with issues of less radioactivity.
• In comparison , Low-Level Waste (LLW) concentrations has lower toxicity.
• Uranium Mill Tailings is a manufacturing byproduct from uranium containing radioactive decay products.

Resource Depletion and Sustanability

• Definition: Using resources faster than they regenerate. Types of Natural Resurces that contain Renewable (Forest, water, fish) and Non Rewewable(fossil Fuel ).
• Ecological Footprint: Measures resource use per person where the Earth doesnt sustain humanity.

Biodiversity and Land Use

• Land use change drives biodiversity loss.
• Biodiversity Supports: with clean water and air, Oxygen production/Ecoysytem, resilience, Genetic diversity and habital loss.
• Agreulcture and developement creates pollution, damns and climate changes, complete destruction is done by fragmentation, degratation.
• Habitat loss has impacnt small fragmented effects and changed of aqualtic spices, which creates climate change and suatability.
• Sustainability depends creating a reducing emissions, conserving reources and protecting ecosystem.

Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions

• Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions is driven by Fossil fuel burning Deforestation, Agriculture Industrial processes and effects different carbon levels.
• The Greenhouse Effect from Sunlight earths atmos that creates radation effect and climate change when heat is trap from sunlight.
• Climate is governed by radiative balance and has Global Warming Potential (GWP)and is measured using IPCC GWP standard- CoA-Equivalent.

Radiative Forcing & Co2 Emissions

• Radiative Forcing measures altration by ading GHGs and creating imbalance of incoming and outgoing Radiation.
• European Union goals climate goals focus using and setting emissions rate formulas.
• Tempalture Change from Radiative Force creates climatic sensitviity to relate warming with GWP and setting emissions rate formulas.
• Global Energy use is dominated through fossil fuels using various Carbon Content of fuel calculations with emissions.

Carbon Intensity and Green House Gas

• Carbon Intensity of fuels (Energy Basis) creates carbo emissions and reduces by creating key drivers.
• Kyoto Protocol & Paris Agreement are protocols created to sustain the enviorment by binding the treaty with all different participation .
• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluates the environmental impact of a product from Raw materials, Manufacturing , Distribuation and disposal effects.
• Data interepretations help improve LCA

Inventory Analysis and Impacnt

• Inventory Analysis helps Quantity inputs (materials, energy) and outputs (emissions, waste) at each stage.
• Each input and output has potential environmental impacts where trade offs are important.
• Climate Change: Greenhouse gas emissions is a midpoint impact with acid rain/ degradation having serious effects.