Environmental Test 2

What is municipal solid waste (MSW)?

Consists of residual and bulky wastes produced by a household.

What is a sanitary landfill?

Is a pit or mound with a liner, leachate, and a gas collection system, where solid waste is compacted into.

What is incineration?

Burning wastes at very high temperatures, might be done twice to remove volatiles.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of incineration?

Advantages: Reduces volume, can retrieve some energy, deals with hazardous waste.

Disadvantages: Metals are untouched, is expensive, is polluting.

What is composting?

The use of aerobic microbes and elevated temperatures to decompose organic wastes, the following is used as fertilizer.

What is resource recovery?

Recycling.

What is the role of conservation?

The best way to reduce waste is to reduce waste generation; ie. less packaging, resource recovery, etc.

What is hazardous waste?

A legal subset of waste that poses a level of health risk, usually having at least one of the following characteristics; is ignitable, reactive, corrosive, or toxic.

What is a superfund site?

Is an abandoned area with improper disposal of hazardous waste.

Explain the PFOA incident.

DuPont manufactured Teflon, which had PFOA as a waste, they stored the PFOA in unlined ponds, which leaked into a nearby river. The pollution killed many farm animals in West Virginia

Explain the Minamata Disease.

Occurred in Minamata, Japan, the river the town relied on was polluted with mercury by a nearby factory. Fish then had high levels of mercury, the civilians of Minamata received mercury poisoning when eating the fish.

Explain the Kepone incident.

In Virginia, a pesticide factory that produced Kepone (very toxic), for which the workers and nearby river received high dosages of.

Explain the Flint, Michigan incident.

The town of Flint switched their water source from Lake Huron to Flint River, but the water was far more corrosive, which leaked lead and other heavy metals their pipes were made of, leading to high amounts of lead poisoning cases.

What is a Life Cycle Analysis?

An LCA examines the environmental impact of a certain task or project from a given start to end point.

Is Life Cycle Analyses mandatory in Canada?

No

What are the five steps in a typical Life Cycle Analysis (cradle-grave)

1. Inception point or raw resource extraction

2. Manufacturing/processing

3. Transportation

4. Usage/retail

5. Waste Disposal

What is a cradle-gate Life Cycle Analysis?

Analyzes a products impact starting from resource extraction and ending at the ‘factory gate’. Speeds up LCAs

What is a cradle-cradle Life Cycle Analysis?

A cradle-grave LCA, but the grave is replaced with a recycling process. Is usually one big loop.

What is a gate-gate Life Cycle Analysis?

The analysis of a product’s impact from one manufacturing point to another. Reduces complexity.

What is a well-wheel Life Cycle Analysis?

A LCA that measures the impact of the transportation of fuels to vehicles, starting from resource extraction.

What is an Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Analysis?

Is a LCA that instead of using materials to follow a product’s impact, it follows money instead.

What are the general four steps of conducting a Life Cycle Assessment?

1. Define the scope of analysis

2. Life-cycle inventories

3. Life-cycle impact assessment

4. Interperation or life-cycle improvement analysis

What is the first step of an LCA (define the scope)?

What is it we want to analyze? What will we assess and what won’t we assess?

What is the second step on an LCA (life-cycle inventories)?

Must quantify the environmental inputs and outputs, usually measuring the categories defined in step 1.

What is the third step of an LCA (impact assessment)?

Evaluate how significant the impacts are based on the second step.

What is the forth step of an LCA (Interpretation)?

Make conclusions and recommendations.

What is an Environmental Assessment?

A process used to help predict the environmental effects of a proposed development. Also allows for better alternatives/mitigation strategies to be used, also allows for continued monitoring.

What should an Environmental Assessment consider as the environment, and what perspectives should they be considered?

Any biophysical or human based environments. Temporal and Spatial.

What are the steps in conducting an Environmental Assessment?

1. Screening

2. Scoping

3. Data Collection

4. Assessment

5. Review/decision

6. Monitoring

What is the first step in an EA (Screening)?

Determines if the proposal needs an EA and at what detail.

What is the second step of an EA (scoping)?

Determine what are the key issues/environmental impacts to be assessed.

What is the third step in an EA (data collection)?

Determine the environmental baseline of the area the project is proposed, consider social impacts.

What is the forth step in an EA (assessment)?

Predict the potential environmental impacts, propose mitigation tactics.

What is the fifth step in an EA (review)?

Produce a technical and public review of the proposal, give the authorities the your decision on the matter.

What is the sixth step in an EA (monitoring)?

Must ensure the implementation of any mitigation tactics and continue to data collect.

What is an Environmental Impact Statement and what does it usually include?

The report produced by the EA process.

Includes:

1. Description and statement of the need for a project

2. Description of the affected area

3. Proposed alternatives

4. The analysis of the impacts due to the project

5. Statement of the significance of the potential environmental impacts

6. Showing what needs to be monitored afterward

What is a Project Proponent (EA)?

A government, company, or organization that is proposing the project.

What is the Regulator (EA)?

The governmental department or agency responsible for conducting the EAs.

What is the Decision Maker (EA)?

An elected governmental minister who approves or disapproves proposals.

What is an Affected Group (EA)?

Any communities directly affected by a proposed project.

What is the Practitioner(s) (EA)?

The consultants who carry out the analysis and produces the Environmental Impact Statement on the behalf of the Proponents.

What is an Output Objective (EA)?

The immediate short-term objectives.

What is an Outcome Objective (EA)?

The long-term societal and environmental objectives of a project.

What three innovations were important from the development of Environmental Assessments.

1. The practice of scoping (reduced the amount of EAs done)

2. Public review of proposals

3. The recognition and care of social impacts

What was the first type of Environmental Assessment used in Canada?

The Environmental Assessment Review Process (EARP)

What is the use of Screening in Environmental Assessments?

Ensures EAs are done on projects where needed, and ensured that EAs were not done on projects that don’t need it. Reduced the amount of EAs done.

What are the two types of triggers for the need of an Environmental Assessment?

1. Prescriptive/Standardized Approach: projects with certain thresholds are met or listed in regulations to be needing EA

2. Discretionary/Customized Approach: a more case by case way of determining whether or not a project needs an EA

What is an Environmental Impact?

Environmental impacts are changes in the conditions of a parameter caused by a project.

What are some ways to improve the accuracy of impact prediction?

Knowing the project well, using knowledge of past similar projects, how other projects will react with the current project, considering both socio-economic and environmental impacts.

What is the Order of Environmental Effects?

1. Direct: those that occur as a primary response due to a project'.

2. Indirect: those that occur as secondary response to direct effects.

What is the Nature of Effect: Incremental Effects?

Small and gradual changes directly attributable to a specific cause over time.

What is the Nature of Effect: Additive Effects?

Direct combination of unrelated or related causes whose net effect is the sum of the combined effects.

What is the Nature of Effect: Synergistic Effects?

Any interaction between effects where the total impact is greater than the individual impacts.

What is the Nature of Effect: Antagonistic Effects

Any interaction between effects where the total impact is less than the individual impacts.

What are the Temporal Characteristics of environmental effects?

1. Duration: length of time an impact occurs.

2. Continuity: is the effect continuous or acts in periods.