Thursday 27 December 2018

Why Nations Should Join Hands In Safekeeping The Environment

By Joshua Rogers


There is always a price to pay with progress. As the human population grows, economic activities grow with it along with technology. Increasing demands for consumer products makes businesses to expand capacity to meet the market demands. These activities mainly occur in urban areas where the human population is concentrated. Industries generate wastes and this can be controlled by hazardous materials management new York.

In recent decades several studies and experiments have been conducted on the adverse effects of hazardous waste on human populations and the environment. Hazardous waste is defined as unwanted materials with physical and chemical properties that includes corrosiveness, toxicity, flammability, and other characteristics that are harmful to life and property.

Manufacturing plants and factories are the main generators of this garbage and often these companies do know care about managing their trash, all they care about is profit. The main culprits are the petrochemical plants, metal plants, plastic and synthetic factories, pharmaceutical laboratories and nuclear facilities. These are also some of the biggest taxpayers.

Poor and underdeveloped countries are fast becoming the favorite dumping ground for trash. Businesses also flock into emerging markets and put up factories abroad where labor is cheap and governments are inefficient and corrupt. Often these countries do have any systems in place to deal with garbage disposal and mostly resort to landfills.

A huge challenge awaits governments and businesses on how to deal with discarded materials like medical supplies, effluents from petrochemical oil and gas explorations, industrial solvents, and sludge. They also have to contend with large quantities of dangerous residential, construction, and small business wastes like electrical and electronic equipment, batteries, healthcare wastes, and others.

It is a fact that the underdeveloped and the developing countries are not the main culprits of the deteriorating earth condition. On the contrary, it is the first world countries, the industrialized nations who the most prolific generators of dangerous trash materials. Their wealth and fancy tastes have resulted in endangering biodiversity which in the end is counterproductive.

Scientific research and studies have indicated that the key to managing this global problem is involvement. This is all encompassing in nature meaning all stakeholders like families, industries including the waste producers, governments, and the human population in general. These have a very impactful role in coming up with or improve systems by investing in effective management systems.

Another danger that humans face today that is really difficult to address is the proliferation of nuclear plants both for civilian and military use. Unlike solid waste, radiation is unseen and its effect do are not visible and will take years to be felt, often passed on to the next generations. Used plutonium and uranium rods are very hard to discard. Radiation leaks resulting from natural disasters is a clear and present danger.

In recent past, it has been a practice of unscrupulous corporations to dump their waste into third world countries. This has caused some uproar among these poor nations. A very recent example was the incident whereby a Canadian company was caught red handed dumping medical waste in the Philippines. It also is uncanny why first world countries impose sanctions on poor nations for the ecological mess that they masterminded.




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