Environmental Management
S. Hartini; A.N. Fatliana; N.U. Handayani; P.A. Wicaksono; B.S. Ramadan; T. Matsumoto
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The current literature on tofu production has predominantly focused on exploring the value-added potential of the waste generated during tofu production and conducting impact assessments related to this production. However, a noticeable gap remains in the research concerning ...
Read More
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The current literature on tofu production has predominantly focused on exploring the value-added potential of the waste generated during tofu production and conducting impact assessments related to this production. However, a noticeable gap remains in the research concerning the comprehensive examination of life cycle costs and eco-efficiency in tofu production and its associated waste. This study aims to assess the environmental and economic impacts of the implementation of recycling alternatives using a life cycle assessment and life cycle cost approach. The impact of waste recycling on the eco-efficiency of small and medium-sized enterprises in Sugihmanik Village, Grobogan Regency, Indonesia is also examined.METHODS: To achieve this goal, this study employed life cycle assessment and life cycle cost methodologies to evaluate eco-efficiency. Data were collected through interviews and direct observations. Cradle-to-grave (tofu production) and cradle-to-cradle (tofu production and waste recycling) approaches were compared. Environmental impact was assessed by determining the 12 impact categories. Environmental cost was determined using the eco-cost 2023 method, and environmental and economic impacts were examined with SimaPro software version 9.4.FINDINGS: Life cycle assessment analysis revealed eutrophication, carbon footprint, and freshwater ecotoxicity to be the categories with the most significant impact for each process. In particular, the eco-cost of the cradle-to-grave approach was 7.03 United States dollars, and that of the cradle-to-cradle approach was 7.90 United States dollars. Life cycle cost analysis yielded a net value of 1.33 United States dollars for the cradle-to-grave process and 38.16 United States dollars for the cradle-to-cradle process. According to the life cycle cost analysis, the recycling scheme increased the overall cost of production. Meanwhile, the eco-efficiency analysis demonstrated an increase in the eco-efficiency of tofu production (cradle-to-grave) and the recycling system (cradle-to-cradle). Waste recycling can increase the eco-efficiency index from 0.18 to 5.CONCLUSION: Life cycle assessment identified eutrophication, carbon footprint, and ecotoxicity (freshwater) as the three major impact categories. Proper waste management in tofu production offers environmental benefits and significant profits, with the net value of the cradle-to-cradle process at 38.99 US dollars. The eco-efficiency values showed a substantial positive increase, and the waste processing scenarios were found to be sustainable and economically beneficial. These findings suggest new business opportunities through straightforward waste processing and affordable production costs. The scheme also reduces the environmental impact and increases the efficiency and profit of the overall tofu production system.
Environmental Management
T. Puspaningrum; N.S. Indrasti; C. Indrawanto; M. Yani
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Coconuts and their derivatives, such as copra and charcoal, are leading commodities of Indonesia contributing to local consumption and exports. Life cycle assessment is a tool for evaluating the inputs, outputs, and potential impacts of a product system throughout its life ...
Read More
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Coconuts and their derivatives, such as copra and charcoal, are leading commodities of Indonesia contributing to local consumption and exports. Life cycle assessment is a tool for evaluating the inputs, outputs, and potential impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle and is associated with product sustainability. The cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of copra and coconut shell charcoal aims to determine the impacts of coconut, copra, and charcoal production from copra byproducts quantitatively and identify scenario improvements to reduce the impacts and enhance sustainability.METHODS: Field observations were conducted in tall coconuts in Agrabinta, South Cianjur, and in copra and coconut shell charcoal factories in Sukabumi, West Java, Indonesia. The life cycle assessment method comprises the following four stages: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation. The scope of this study was based on land preparation, nurseries, planting, fertilization, harvesting of mature coconuts, transportation of mature coconuts, copra production, transportation of coconut shells, and charcoal production. Ten impacts were calculated using the Center of Environmental Science of Leiden University Impact Assessment baseline method with Simapro software.FINDINGS: This study obtained ten impact categories, not only the global warming potential impact similar to most studies of perennial crop products in Indonesia. Normalization results showed that the category with enormous impacts on humans from coconut cultivation and copra processing activities had terrestrial ecotoxicity potential. The largest impact on charcoal production was on the human toxicity potential. Separated coconut factories from plantations have a high impact because of high fuel transportation. Four recommendation scenarios were formulated: 1) utilization of smoke from pyrolysis into liquid, 2) implementation of organic coconut cultivation practices, 3) integration of coconut plantations with copra and charcoal processing plants and processing smoke into liquid, and 4) combining scenarios 1, 2, and 3. In scenario 3, seven of ten impacts showed the lowest value among other scenarios. This scenario potentially decreases the impact from 68.35 to 99.62 percent. The human toxic potential of coconut shell charcoal decreased from 2.92 × 105 to 109.43 kilogram 1,4-dichlorobenzene equivalent, terrestrial ecotoxicity potential decreased from 59 to 19 kilogram 1,4-dichlorobenzene equivalent, and the global warming potential decreased from 1753.55 to 93.03 kilogram carbon dioxide equivalent.CONCLUSION: Life cycle assessment can evaluate the impacts of copra and coconut shell charcoal from the coconut cultivation to the production stages. Opportunities for improvement can be identified from the interpretation and hotspots. Scenario analysis results showed the potential of developing integrated coconut agroindustry with coconut plantations, copra factories, and charcoal factories to produce liquid smoke in one location. This integration markedly reduces the impact due to the reduction of transportation fuel and emissions and the treatment of air pollution from pyrolysis.
Environmental Management
D. Justus Reymond; K. Sudalaimuthu
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Heavy metals can enter the food chain in the aquatic environment and become available for accumulation in biota. Industrialization and agricultural developments are progressively causing ecological concerns, which must be addressed. This study aimed to ascertain the heavy metals ...
Read More
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Heavy metals can enter the food chain in the aquatic environment and become available for accumulation in biota. Industrialization and agricultural developments are progressively causing ecological concerns, which must be addressed. This study aimed to ascertain the heavy metals in Tamiraparani River sediments using contamination factor and contamination degree, which would help administrative bodies implement control measures. For heavy metal analysis, this study is unique in that it focuses on the far downstream, where the sediment deposition is higher.METHODS: Using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer, the abundance of iron, manganese, copper, and chromium was determined in this study. In this study, the heavy metals in the sediments are selected on the basis of previous studies. Additionally, to assess sediment pollution status, contamination factor, contamination degree, and pollution load index were used. Furthermore, a geographical information system was used to analyse the temporal variations of heavy metals in the sediments for different spatial locations downstream of the river.FINDINGS: The study revealed that iron > manganese > chromium > copper concentration ranges from 3838 to 853, 68 to 7.8, 8.3 to 0.5, and 5.6 to 0.26 milligram per kilogram, respectively. The contamination factor ranges from 0.006 to 0.093 among all the sampling locations, heavy metals, and seasons, indicating that the pollution is in a low-level category. The contamination degree ranges from 0.039 to 0.378 among sampling stations and seasons, also indicating low-category pollution. The pollution load index value ranges from 0.004 to 0.092, which is less than 1 (guideline value), indicating less pollution impact. The seasonal variation shows that the post-monsoon is highly polluted because of the excessive sediment deposit from upstream after monsoon rainfall.CONCLUSION: The contamination factor and contamination degree are within the acceptable limit. However, they are in an increasing phase during monsoon seasons, which indicates that heavy metals are from industries and are built up along the river banks upstream. Additionally, chromium and copper are in high concentrations during post-monsoon (chromium = 6.643, copper = 5.636) than during pre-monsoon because of anthropogenic activities and industrial waste discharge into the river stream.
Environmental Management
J. Prasara-A; A. Bridhikitti
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cycling has been widely promoted as an alternative mode of transport to help the reduction of environmental impact and improve users' health. Promoting cycling will help enhance the "Green City" initiative in Thailand. While several studies have addressed social issues of cyclists, ...
Read More
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cycling has been widely promoted as an alternative mode of transport to help the reduction of environmental impact and improve users' health. Promoting cycling will help enhance the "Green City" initiative in Thailand. While several studies have addressed social issues of cyclists, the environmental impacts and economic viability of cycling infrastructure are yet unknown. Quantifying its environmental impact and the costing aspect are essential to prove that cycling would positively affect a city. This study compares the expected environmental and economic impacts before and after constructing a bicycle lane in Mahasarakham, Thailand.METHODS: This study uses life cycle assessment and life cycle costing to assess a bicycle lane's environmental and economic viability. Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing are tools used to analyze environmental impact and cost during the life cycle of a product or service. The scope of this study covers the processing of raw material acquisition, transportation, construction, use, and disposal. The functional unit set for this study is the use of a bicycle lane for one year. The environmental impact examined is greenhouse gas emissions along the product's life cycle (the so-called "carbon footprint").FINDING: According to the results, approximately 0.2 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent of carbon footprint could have been reduced in 2020 had a bicycle lane been installed. The use phase plays the leading role in reducing carbon footprint. The reduction in environmental impacts is due to reduced fuel consumption by cars and motorcycles when bicycles are used. Even though a low rate (26%) of road users, who participated in this research, were willing to ride bikes had a bicycle lane been provided, a considerable amount of environmental impact could still have been reduced.CONCLUSION: The carbon footprint expected to be reduced in a year is valued at about 4.7 million baht of carbon credit. In comparison, the life cycle cost of bicycle lanes for one year is approximately 3.7 million baht. Furthermore, it is anticipated that had a bicycle lane been installed since 2015, the city would have reduced overall carbon footprint emissions by more than 1.15 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2020. Therefore, the results of environmental impact and cost assessment from this study are helpful for urban environmental management.
Environmental Management
M.A. Peñaranda Barba; V. Alarcón Martínez; I. Gómez Lucas; J. Navarro Pedreño
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Open-pit mining is an important activity to obtain mineral resources that supply society with raw materials to improve people's quality of life. However, this extractive activity causes negative environmental impacts and, it is therefore necessary to identify and evaluate these ...
Read More
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Open-pit mining is an important activity to obtain mineral resources that supply society with raw materials to improve people's quality of life. However, this extractive activity causes negative environmental impacts and, it is therefore necessary to identify and evaluate these impacts in order to design preventive and control measures to reduce them and thus safeguard the environment and natural resources. In the Region of Murcia, in Spain, as well as other Mediterranean areas with similar climatic conditions, there is a great deal of mining activity linked to the building sector, in which mainly ornamental rock (marble and marble limestone) and limestone aggregates are used. All of this has given rise to numerous active and abandoned mines, where no restoration process has been carried out, generating strong impacts on the environment.METHODS: In this study, 8 environmental impact assessments studies of ornamental rock and aggregate quarries in the Region of Murcia were analysed to identify the negative impacts on the abiotic and biotic environment, landscape, socio-economic and socio-cultural environment, and infrastructures and analysing preventive and control measures. FINDINGS: According to the environmental impact assessment studies analysed, the importance of the most significant environmental impacts has been calculated, indicating whether the impacts are critical, severe, moderate or compatible, and based on it, preventive and corrective measures are proposed together in an impact mitigation management system based in flow charts that will serve to more easily apply and control these measures, in order to prevent them from causing significant or irreversible damage to the environment. Analysing these measures, it has been observed that 90% of the measures applied to control the different negative environmental factors in this type of quarry are the same.CONCLUSION: Open-pit mining extraction systems have a series of similar characteristics that allow a systematic approach to be established when analysing the impacts. With the use of flowcharts, it becomes easier to apply measures to reduce environmental impacts and in addition, these diagrams, allow at the same time the easy incorporation of updates due to changing regulations.
Environmental Management
R.J. Isaifan
Abstract
The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first reported from Wuhan, China, on December 31st, 2019. As the number of coronavirus infections has exceeded 100,000 with toll deaths of about 5000 worldwide as of early March, 2020, scientists and researchers are racing to investigate the nature of ...
Read More
The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first reported from Wuhan, China, on December 31st, 2019. As the number of coronavirus infections has exceeded 100,000 with toll deaths of about 5000 worldwide as of early March, 2020, scientists and researchers are racing to investigate the nature of this virus and evaluate the short and long term effects of this disease. Despite its negative impacts that obliged the World Health Organization to declare COVID-19 epidemic as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the rate of mortality of this infection has not exceeded 3.4% globally. On the other hand, the mortality rate caused by ambient air pollution has contributed to 7.6% of all deaths in 2016 worldwide. The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced China to lockdown its industrial activities and hence dropped its NO2 and carbon emissions by 30 and 25%, respectively. This work reports on the first case study that compares the air quality status before and after the crisis. It sheds light on the facts related to the demographics of deaths by gender, age and health status before infection. The historical data on air quality, estimates of annual deaths and its economic burden have been presented and analyzed. The actual daily deaths due to COVID-19 have been obtained from the official records of the daily Situation Reports published by World Health Organization as of March 11th. The rate of mortality due to COVID-19 was impacted by two factors: age and health status. Results show that 75% of deaths were related to cases that had underlying present diseases with the majority aged of 80+ years. The reported figures were compared with the average daily mortality due to poor air quality which reached up to 3287 deaths due to high levels of NO2, O3 and PM. The air quality status before the crisis was compared with the current situation showing that COVID-19 forced-industrial and anthropogenic activities lockdown may have saved more lives by preventing ambient air pollution than by preventing infection.
Environmental Management
A.A. Shayesteh; O. Koohshekan; F. Khadivpour; M. Kian; R. Ghasemzadeh; M. Pazoki
Abstract
Due to the growth of population and industrialization, a great number of problems associated with producing industrial wastes have been created for both the environment and human beings. The industrial waste management in Brujen industrial park, located in the western part of Iran, has been investigated ...
Read More
Due to the growth of population and industrialization, a great number of problems associated with producing industrial wastes have been created for both the environment and human beings. The industrial waste management in Brujen industrial park, located in the western part of Iran, has been investigated in this study using the environmental rapid impact assessment matrix technique. For this purpose, the effective activities and components were classified. The determination of the best scenarios with the least impact on the environment was performed by developing the scenarios for possible industrial waste disposal and making calculations by the rapid impact assessment matrix method. The components of the environment were first classified into physical/chemical, economic/operational, biological/ecological, and social/cultural items. Afterward, with respect to the criteria of the rapid impact assessment matrix method, the importance of environmental impacts was determined by standard scoring of the developed scenarios. Ultimately, the environmental score of each component for the scenarios was calculated using the rapid impact assessment matrix method, and the best scenario with the least environmental impacts was selected through a quantitative comparison. According to the results, scenario 3 (pyrolysis) and scenario 1 (recycling) were found to have the most negative impact and the most positive impact on the environment. Scenario 4 (incineration), with its severe air pollution, obtained a high negative score and was excluded from the options. As a result, two systems of recycling (scenario 1) and the sanitary landfill (scenario 2) were identified as complementary to each other and were selected as a solid waste management method.
Environmental Management
M. Akbari; M. Ownegh; H.R. Asgari; A. Sadoddin; H. Khosravi
Abstract
Risk assessment provides the possibility of planning and management to prevent and reduce the risk of desertification. The present study is aimed to assess the hazard and risk of desertification and to develop management programs in the semi-arid western regions of Golestan Province in Iran. Desertification ...
Read More
Risk assessment provides the possibility of planning and management to prevent and reduce the risk of desertification. The present study is aimed to assess the hazard and risk of desertification and to develop management programs in the semi-arid western regions of Golestan Province in Iran. Desertification rate was obtained using the Iranian model of desertification potential assessment. Since the rating system was considered for the indicators, data analyses were carried out according to the Mann-Whitney test. The risk of desertification was calculated based on hazard, elements at risk and vulnerability assessment maps. The intensity of desertification was estimated to be medium. Among the factors affecting desertification, agriculture by the weighted average of 3.22 had the highest effect, followed by soil, vegetation, water and wind erosion criteria by weighted averages of 2.45, 2.32, 2.15 and 1.6 respectively. Desertification risk assessment results also showed that about 78% of central and northern parts of the region, with the largest population and residential centers, surface and underground water resources, agriculture and horticulture, is confronted with a high to very high degree of risk. Management plans and control measures, based on risk values were presented in four activities (with two management priorities under critical and non-critical conditions). For the management program with the largest area. Control measures and strategies such as the establishment of halophytic and xerophytic plants, drainage networks, resilient facilities and infrastructure were proposed. Reducing the risk of desertification, could play a crucial role in the sustainable development of drylands and desert ecosystems.
Environmental Management
T. Salem; Sh.S. Ahmed; M. Hamed; G.H. Abd ElAziz
Abstract
A risk assessment study was conducted to predict the expected hazardous influence on the ecosystem resulted from urbanization and industrialization activities at Helwan area, Egypt. To achieve these goals, soils, plants and water samples were collected from Helwan area, and their total concentrations ...
Read More
A risk assessment study was conducted to predict the expected hazardous influence on the ecosystem resulted from urbanization and industrialization activities at Helwan area, Egypt. To achieve these goals, soils, plants and water samples were collected from Helwan area, and their total concentrations of inorganic contaminants (Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn) and organic pollutants; such as Phenol and hydrocarbons were measured. The obtained results showed that, the concentrations of organic contaminants in water streams and surrounding soils recorded high concentration values than the permissible limits, while inorganic elements were within the safe limits for irrigation. In addition, soils irrigated with the effluents of industrial units recorded high values of inorganic and organic contaminants. Consequently, the levels of these contaminants were high in plant tissues grown thereon; especially the edible parts. Risk assessment based on available Predicted No Effect Concentration values for the aquatic and terrestrial environment was performed. Inorganic elements were expected to cause serious hazard problems for both aquatic organisms and soil microorganisms. The impact of these pollutants on human health was calculated using daily metals intake of inorganic metals via consumption of edible plants. Hazard index values proved that concentrations of Cr may cause serious hazard problems for humans in this area; especially, children.
