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20 November 2009
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What is sustainability?
RoHS
Conclusion
Further reading
If you ask 50 persons to define this relatively
new word, you will probably receive at least 45 different answers!
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives the
following:
sustainable, adjective.
...
3. Able to be maintained at a certain rate or level. M20.
...
b. spec. Of economic activity,
development, agriculture, etc.: not leading to depletion of resources or
degradation of the environment. L20.
...
•
sustaina"bility
noun L20.
In this context, it is clear that definition 3b is the one that counts.
Unfortunately, it is not complete. For an action or a process to be deemed
sustainable, it is necessary to examine the whole impact on the environment
and resources and not just the immediate part. This is called the
"cradle-to-grave", "womb-to-tomb" or holistic approach and it also
involves risk assessment. There is also an economic aspect to the question;
an action is not sustainable if it is either too cheap or too expensive.
If the costs are too low, it will become so
popular that the resources will become depleted; this is the situation with
oil supply. An illustration of this is amply shown in the North Sea oil and
gas fields, which have become exploited to exhaustion in a relatively short
term, encouraged by a spendthrift governmental fiscal policy. The result is
that, as fuel prices are now much higher on the world markets, the UK is
having to pay more than it ever earned from this manna from heaven to
provide energy.
If the costs of exploitation are too high with
respect to the world market supply, then sales will be insufficient to
obtain economy of scale. This is the situation with photovoltaic panels for
solar power. The cost of electricity produced is many times higher than that
produced from fossil fuels, simply because it is impossible to amortise them
in a shorter time than their lifetime. For this reason, some governments,
including Cyprus, are offering attractive fiscal packages to allow more
rapid amortisation. It is thus hoped that they will exit the Catch-22
situation that they are too expensive because the production rate is low,
because the demand is low, because they are too expensive. Currently, solar
panels are therefore non-sustainable. If subsidies do render them
attractive, it is the tax-payer who bears the cost. As an aside, one wonders
whether government-subsidised electricity is permissible as a cost of
industrial production under EU and WTO rules!
Another aspect of sustainability is recycling
(see the essay on
Waste).
Perhaps the most common product that is recycled is paper, and that is
fairly familiar to us. The greater the quantity of recycled material that is
used in the production of any material or product, so the amount of virgin
resources required is diminished. Again, there is an economic factor. In
many cases, virgin materials are cheaper than recycled ones. There is,
perhaps, a case to be made for virgin materials to be taxed so that the cost
to consumers is the same (or more) as for recycled ones of equivalent
quality.
Unfortunately, externalised costs are rarely
included in calculating the sustainability of a process, whether they be
financial or environmental. To take a hypothetical example, if a new coal
mine is exploited or a new power plant is built, it may require a lot of
arable land to make room for the bing and the buildings. This seizure of
land may mean that a farmer and his hands are deprived of their livelihood
and are forced to seek unemployment benefits at the cost of the community.
Equally, run-off may be polluted from the exploitation, causing damage to
local biotopes, requiring later costly remediation. The case of the 2
million inhabitants displaced because of the construction of the Three
Gorges dam in China is a case in point. A lot of valuable farm land,
partially in the Yangtze flood plain, has been lost for ever and the
peasants displaced to a poorer soil and ruder climate higher up, where it is
almost impossible to scratch a living with different crops, for which they
have no experience. The cost of their losses has not been included in the
project costs.
Precautionary measures to avoid pollution are
often not considered when discussing sustainability. To take a simple case:
many thousands of industrial chemicals are supplied to the end users in 200
litre or similar drums, amounting to millions per year. These are subjected
to transport and handling, especially in the end-users' factories. Accidents
with these drums are a daily occurrence, due to storage in the open causing
them to rust through, being mishandled by machinery such as fork-lift
trucks, bungs being left open, taps not closing properly etc. In many
countries, it is theoretically mandatory to make sure that, in the event of
an accident, no matter where it occurs, no harm can result from the leaked
chemicals. This usually involves resistant retention measures, able to
contain all the products stored or being used in an area. Unfortunately,
these rules are more often ignored than observed, even in advanced places.
Of course, these measures do not apply uniquely to drums but to any kind of
container, including equipment the chemicals are used in.
Finally, many regulations, laws, directives and
other forms of rule-making are contrary to the sensible application of
sustainability. I could quote a number of examples, but I'll take just one.
As my example, I'll just cite one section of
the EU Restriction of the use of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and
Electronic Equipment, RoHS, Directive, which came into force on 1 July 2006.
Put bluntly, it forbids the use of lead in solder for electronics
assemblies, with a few minor exemptions (both "home-grown" and imported
electronics are regulated). The thinking behind this is that end-of-life
assemblies may be landfilled and it is possible that the lead may be leached
out by liquids, driven by rain, and enter into ground water. This seems a
noble aim and should earn our support. However, even a superficial study
shows that no risk assessment was carried out, which makes this regulation
one of the most stupid that has ever been promulgated by the European Union
and will actually cause much more harm than good. In other words, it is not
sustainable. Let me explain in detail...
-
It is chemically unlikely that lead would
be leached out of solder under practical conditions. Even if it were,
any lead salts would be fixed by an ion exchange mechanism in the soil,
in the top 2 - 3 cm, so it would be impossible for lead to reach ground
water. In any case, EU regulations insist that landfills be divided into
lined cells, which would even prevent leachate from reaching the soil.
The basic premiss is therefore wrong.
-
The
Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) states that 75%
of electrical and electronics waste must be recycled. The solder is, by
far, the easiest component on electronic assemblies to recycle. If the
solder is recycled, there will be no lead in the landfill, will there?
The regulation is therefore contradictory to another regulation,
which was simultaneously promulgated, and reinforces the falsity of the
premiss.
-
There are no recorded cases of lead being
found hazardous in the electronics assembly industry, with over 70 years
of continuous use of lead-bearing solders. There is therefore no
health and safety issue in the industry.
-
The traditional solders used in the
industry are usually alloys of 60 to 63 per cent tin, the rest being
lead and sometimes small amounts of other metals. These alloys melt
between 180° and 185°C. Various lead-free alloys have been proposed as
substitutes, mostly in the range of 92 to 97 per cent tin, the rest
being copper and/or silver. These generally have melting points between
210° and 220°C. Soldering, which is an energy-intensive process, will
have to be done at a higher temperature, requiring more energy and
therefore more pollution if the electricity is generated from fossil
fuels. This contradicts the stated EU target of reduced energy
consumption and lower carbon dioxide emissions.
-
The higher soldering temperature will
mechanically and thermally stress the electronic components more,
potentially reducing their reliability. Furthermore, solder with lead is
more ductile than lead-free solder, which is comparatively brittle. This
means that the solder joints themselves are more prone to fracture due
to vibration or with changes of temperature (maybe this is why the
electronics for aircraft have been exempted from the regulation, for
fear that they will fall out of the sky). In addition, because of the
higher soldering temperatures, post-soldering residues will be more
difficult to clean off; these residues are a frequent cause of failures
in high-reliability equipment. Reduced reliability will mean a
shorter lifetime for electronics assemblies and therefore more waste and
costlier appliances.
-
Ready-to-use lead-free solder is about 30
to 40 per cent more costly than traditional solder, because it contains
about 50 per cent more tin. Additionally, it is no coincidence that one
of the main lobby groups in favour of the regulation is a subsidiary of
an association of international tin producers. The cost of
appliances will inevitably rise.
-
Because the lead-free solder contains about
50 per cent more tin, the demand for tin will rise. Most tin ore comes
from alluvial deposits in Malaysian, Indonesian and Brazilian tropical
rain forests, which are permanently destroyed by the mining activities.
Vast areas in these countries have been devastated by the demand for tin
and this demand will rise, solder being amongst the main tin consumers
in the world. On the other hand, the lead used in traditional solder is
less than 0.45 percent of total lead production, so the difference here
will be very small. Reports have shown that the proportion of the
earth's surface covered by tropical rain forest has already dwindled
from 15 per cent in 1951 to 6 per cent today (mostly because of timber
and non-sustainable agriculture). Can we afford to see the very lungs of
the earth destroyed by the increased demand for tin? This
regulation will therefore directly cause more environmental damage to a
dwindling and very fragile eco-system which is essential to support life
on earth.
It can therefore be seen that these seven
reasons, which are not even exhaustive, make the RoHS Directive
contradictory to the notion of sustainability, because there are no
advantages to be gained (except for the metal producers). Coming back to the
dictionary definition, Of economic activity, development, agriculture,
etc.: not leading to depletion of resources or degradation of the
environment, we can see that it will lead to both increased depletion of
resources and increased degradation of the environment. How can this have
happened? Simply that an EU Commission did not evaluate the science or the
"cradle-to-grave" impact before proposing the legislation, nor did they
conduct a risk assessment as EU regulations stipulate, "because funds were
not available". In other words, this harmful legislation was bulldozed
through on the grounds that lead is a politically dirty word, aided and
abetted by some vested interests. My view is that this is scandalous and I
hope that every EMP who voted in favour of this Directive (actually a
parliamentary formality) would hang his head in shame at having promoted an
act which is contrary to sustainability.
This case is not unique and I can cite a number
of other idiocies of a similar nature promulgated by our so-called
representatives in Brussels, due to a lack of risk assessment, scientific
knowledge, coupled with a surplus of prejudice and vested interests.
Sustainability is still an ill-defined word and
should be used with discretion and a knowledge of its long-term,
"cradle-to-grave" sense. Wind farms are often cited as an example of
sustainable energy generation. They are certainly renewable energy
generators, but has anyone really determined that they are sustainable?
Think "cradle-to-grave"!
This essay may be contrary to popular thinking,
which is probably too shallow. I make no apologies for this.
Sustainable
development
ΑειφόÏος ανάπτυξη
Survival for a Small Planet
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