Sprucing up...
the ultimate goal of economic development is to improve human welfare by raising living standards, enriching education, bettering health systems and providing equal opportunities for all. This process is crucially dependent on the environment and natural resources to provide the goods and services which directly and indirectly generate socio-economic benefits. However, economic development is often accompanied by a significant adverse impact on the environment, as the conversion of natural resources to finished or semi-finished products results in residues that are often discharged as wastes and pollute the environment. If the entire mechanism of converting raw material into an useful end product is carried out with 100 per cent efficiency, it would result in zero waste.
As populations and incomes rise, a growing economy will require more inputs (thus depleting the earth's resources) and will produce more emissions and waste (over-burdening the earth's sinks). The moot question is whether the factors that tend to reduce environmental damage per unit of activity can more than compensate for any negative consequences of overall growth in scale.
In clean technology seems to lie the answer to better eco-management practices. Alternatively identified as low-waste or no-waste technology, clean technology, as defined by the Commission of European Communities, refers to the measures taken by various industries to reduce or eliminate waste and pollutants at the source and conserve raw materials, natural resources and energy. These precautions curtail the harmful emissions to air, land and water. In other words, it is the ability to reduce environmental damage per unit of input or output of production that results in a cleaner environment.
The advent of the cleaner production ( cp ) method augurs well for the environment. A solution for industrial pollution, more often than not, lies in the use of conventional waste treatment referred to as
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