Transcript for EO403 - Environmental Impacts.PDF

Graduate Apprenticeship - Engineering Design and Manufacture Class: EO403 - Design for X Environmental Impacts In this video, we're going to look at environmental impacts that cause issues for today's society. The definition of environmental impact can be regarded as any change to the environment, e...

Graduate Apprenticeship - Engineering Design and Manufacture Class: EO403 - Design for X Environmental Impacts In this video, we're going to look at environmental impacts that cause issues for today's society. The definition of environmental impact can be regarded as any change to the environment, either good or bad, which results from an organisation's activities, products, or services. It can also be regarded as the effect that people's actions have on the environment. There are numerous environmental impacts. To name a few, there's global warming, air and water pollution, poverty, resource depletion, biodiversity of the species, ozone depletion, and land degradation. And I am sure you will have heard of all of these. I'm going to look at five of the most critical issues in turn. The first one, probably the most recognised and the one that's always in the media, is global climate change. In the Stern Report of 2006, Stern noted that global climate change could shrink the global economy by as much as 20%. It is a key issue that we're all facing. CO2 emissions are causing issues. We've all heard of this on the news and in the newspapers. And since the early 1900s, the emissions have been increasing rapidly. No longer can the oceans or the land absorb the amount of CO2 emissions. We're producing more and more CO2 through pollution, through exhaust, and so on. Global emissions can also be looked at and are actually categorised by sector. Research has been undertaken to see how much emissions are coming from these different sectors. For example, power, agriculture, and transport collectively amount for at least half of the global emissions. Anything that we can do as designers to help reduce the global emissions is a positive way forward. Another critical issue is pollution. Air pollution can cause as much as 4.6 million deaths per year. And at least 1 in 4 people around the globe will be affected by air pollution in some form. Water pollution is also at a critical level. There are over 1 in 6 people across the globe without a clean water supply, and over 2.1 million people will die annually due to poor water quality. Poverty is a third critical issue. Population across the globe is rising rapidly. And this is actually exploding over the less developed countries much more than over the more developed countries. It is creating a wealth imbalance. It's also causing issues in terms of the amount of food that we need to sustain the global population. It is estimated that 1 in 6 people across the globe currently suffer from hunger and malnutrition. The fourth critical issue is resources. We are using more and more of the world's natural resources-things like water, and minerals, and materials, and so on. If we look at water in some parts of the globe, we are using far more than Page 1/2 other parts. In Sub-Saharan Africa, we're using about 20 litres per day per person, compared to over 600 litres per person per day in countries like North America. Waste management is also a critical issue. And over the past decades, countries have been looking at how they can manage waste, especially in terms of how they can reduce the amount that goes to landfill or is burnt. The final critical issue is one which is affecting biodiversity, the extinction of the species. There is an organisation called the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They collect information on all the species of animals, birds, and plants throughout the world. They have what is called the Red List, the endangered species list. They predict that if we continue in the manner we are, we will lose 13% of the world's plants, 1 in 4 of the mammals that we currently have, and one bird out of eight. If we look at the data and the statistics that they produce, we will see that every category of animal and plant is decreasing in terms of species' numbers. Amphibians are reducing. The number of birds are reducing. The number of mammals are reducing. And in particular, the number of coral in the oceans is decreasing rapidly. And this has been happening over the last decade or so. So as designers, we need to think about what we can do within the product development cycle to reduce the environmental impact that the products' we design create. Page 2/2