Page 49 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

L1644_C01.fm Page 25 Monday, October 20, 2003 11:46 AM

Environmental Impact
Limit

Manager

decision
Time
FIGURE 1.8 Decision-making situation in environmental management.

A risk is that, after several decisions, the acceptable level of resource consump-
tion and pollution is exceeded. In the end, in the case of business managers, their
decisions may cause problems with the administration, neighbors of their facilities
or the consumers of their product. In the case of administrations, decisions may
raise protests among the population and lost elections. In general, managers lack
sufficient time to apply environmental management tools. They entrust internal
and/or external specialists (consultants) the corresponding projects or assessments
and base the obtained results to support and justify their decision-making under
rational arguments. When managers do not master environmental management tools,
they are at risk of choosing a specialist who applies a certain tool that will render
a result subject to the methodology on which it is based. Consider, for example, the
question of whether to build a new thermal power plant near carbon mines in a very
populated area or far from mines in a sparsely populated area.
ERA applied to population exposure would choose the second option, while
with an LCA the first option would seem more appropriate due to reduced transpor-
tation. In sum, we must not trust these tools blindly; instead we must understand
their inherent limitations and apply each one, or a combination of them, to the right
context.

1.7 CASE STUDY: WASTE INCINERATION AS
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM — THE CASE OF
TARRAGONA, SPAIN

1.7.1 WASTE INCINERATION AS ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM
In recent years, waste incineration has been frequently preferred to other waste
treatment or disposal alternatives due to advantages such as volume reduction,
chemical toxicity destruction and energy recovery. However, strong public opposi-
tion to waste incineration often impedes the implementation of this technology. One
of the main reasons for this opposition has been the perception that stack emissions
are a real and serious threat to human health (Schuhmacher et al., 1997). In past
years, the environmental consequences of incineration processes and their potential
impact on public health by emissions of trace quantities of metals and

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