Environmental Damage - Causes

Many human activities damage the environment. For humanity to continue to reap the benefits of the exploitation of resources it must find sustainable methods.

Causes of environmental damage

These are just some causes of environmental damage. Many of them are interlinked. The causes can be split up into 2 categories:

1. Extraction of resources

2. By-product of resource use and transportation

Extraction of resources

When extracting resources (e.g. cutting down trees, quarrying or mining) the environment is directly being damaged as ecosystems are being disturbed.

For example, when trees are cut the water content in the ground changes potentially resulting in ground movement. Tree roots also create a negative pressure within soil allowing the soil to be more structurally stable.

Moreover, trees are ecological hotspots for animals and insects alike with complex ecosystems forming around trees (even in mini forests!). Extracting resources sustainably, although still negatively affecting the environment, allows the environment to heal and adapt to the new changes.

Unsustainable resource extraction, the likes of which we see as part of manufacturing processes, irreversibly damages the environment (e.g. deforestation). It damages ecological food chains and doesn't allow the resources to be replenished. In activities such as mining, resources won't replenish in any meaningful time frame so we consider these as non-renewable resources.

By-products

Now that resources have been extracted, they need to be delivered to the manufacturing plant or factories for it to be used. If they're being sold as raw resources, then they might need to get transported two warehouses to be stored and then finally transported to the client.

During transportation carbon dioxide and other gases are released by the vehicles moving them. The more resources you can carry on one trip the more efficient the trip is. This means that heavier resources that require more trips to deliver a specific volume in comparison to a lighter resource, release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is one of the main propagators of climate change due to its assistance of the greenhouse effect. And climate change alters the environment that plants and animals naturally inhabit resulting in environmental damage.

Some resources need to be refined or altered for them to be in a usable state. Take plastic for example, it is often refined from crude oil through two main processes: polymerisation and polycondensation [4]. This process requires the use of energy and so greenhouse gases are released. Plastic is a very stable compound and so when it is discarded it doesn't degrade (it is not biodegradable) [5]. Checkout a future post specifically on plastic waste to find out more.

---

References

[1]: Fuglestvedt, J., Berntsen, T., Myhre, G., Rypdal, K. and Skeie, R. (2008). Climate forcing from the transport sectors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(2), pp.454-458. ​

[2]: Nörmann, N. and Maier-Speredelozzi, V. (2016). Cost and Environmental Impacts in Manufacturing: A Case Study Approach. Procedia Manufacturing, 5, pp.58-74. ​

[3]: Bkpgroup.com. (2019). Environment | Waste Management | BKP Waste & Recycling Ltd. [online] Available at: https://www.bkpgroup.com/blog/bkp-group-news/how-does-waste-impact-the-environment ​

​[4]: How plastics are made [Internet]. Plasticseurope.org. Available from: https://www.plasticseurope.org/en/about-plastics/what-are-plastics/how-plastics-are-made

[5]: PTF: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS [Internet]. Ecologycenter.org. Available from: https://ecologycenter.org/plastics/ptf/report3/