Waste Management

Until the 1970s, municipal solid waste (MSW) was picked up without any kind of separation and it was mainly disposed in non-controlled dumps. As an alternative, garbage was heat treated or burned.

Over the last few decades, the concept of recycling and recovery of materials through the separate collection have begun to spread all over the world thanks to the enforcement of laws that regulate waste disposal.

It is important to remember that every process garbage undergoes leads to somekind of transformation and/or to its transfer from one place to another and is not completely eliminated (law of the conservation of mass).

Thus, the most eco-frindly attitude that man can take up is the upstream decrease and the recycling of materials (as occured in the past).

In order to achieve these goals it is fundamental to make citizens and producers aware.

the Disposal Society

A big change took place during the second half of XIX century.

The Industial Revolution gave the green light to the intensive exploitation of resources: the industry began to manufacture items on a massive scale, making them less expensive than those produced by craftsmen and, as a consequence, they were affordable.

Human beings soon changed their lifestyle going from a frugal and agricultural society to an industrial and consumer one, which uses disposal objects for everyday life.

Today, objects are not repaired or reused because other new products can replace them. The result of this attitude has been an overproduction of waste that in the majority of the cases is not disposed of properly and becomes the negative symbol of prosperity and wealth.

The industrial age also changed the nature of waste: the use of glass, metal and organic waste have increased drammatically and other non-degradable materials, like plastic, have started to accumulate in the evinronment.

The Waste Age

The concept of waste does not exist in nature. In the biological cycles, in fact, the waste from one organism becomes a fundamental resource for other living beings, a nutrient for something else in the same system, so that everything is converted.

Dead organisms, such as manure or vegetable remains, are broken down and converted by other specific living beings, called decomposers.

Instead, every man-managed activity is based on a model forseeing that when substances or energy are exracted to produce consumer goods, the quantity of waste that derives from work processes are dumped into the environment itself.

In fact, over the centuries man has had to face the very big problem of where to dump waste. What could not be recycled or reused was burned or buried and stockpiled outside the residential areas, giving rise to the first garbage dumps.

In ancient times, such as the Middle Ages, the Reinassance and during the French Revolution, until the beginning of the industrial society, what was thrown away by the rich, became precious for the poor : before becoming garbage the objects went from one owner to another.

Furthermore, the farming culture still gave back to the soil what had been produced by the soil itself.

Stockbreeding and Biodiversity

Today biodiversity is seriously treathened because of the high rate of animal and vegetable extinction.

Stockbreeding generates serious effects on biological diversity and it contributes to the loss of certain species, ths making the consequences of deforestation, soil degradation, pollution and climate change even worse.

Its repercussions are also due to the high number of livestock raised today that accounts for 20% of the biomas of all living animals in the world. Moreover, livestock occupy 30% of the territory that was inhabited only by wild animals in the past.

What are the most serious effects of livestock on biodiversity?

This grass-based type of farming has adverse effects on wild fauna (for instance, it bothers and threatens predators like wolves and foxes and the nighbouring protected areas), but its worst consequence is linked to the increase in agricultural activity that has changed the use of soil and has led to the abandonment of grass-based livestock breeding in the developed countries, especially in Europe.

Over the last few years numerous studies were carried out in order to find the best way to protect biodiversity.

What are the causes of biodiversity loss ?

The main cause of biodiversity loss is attributable to human impact on the Earth’s ecosystem all over the world. Human activity, in fact, has significantly changed our planet because it has exploited spieces through fishing and hunting, changed the biogeochemical cycles and forced species to migrate from one place to another.

Man is blamed for the extinction of certain species for different reasons. The impact of agriculture on terrestrial ecology, for instance, has had a great impact on this process.

The agricultural conversion of the territory, which has deducted seizable land surfaces from forests, meadows and moist environments, has oversimplified the complicated ancient structure of biomes and ecosystems.

However, industrialization and urbanization have also played a key role in the extinction of species. In particular, during the last three or four centuries, human demographic growth has recorded an underpresedented rate, which has let to an environmental transformation in terms of concreting, industrialization and degradation of the territory, thus completely changing the appearance and the ecological quality of habitats.

Another crucial factor that contributes to biodiversity loss is anthropogenic climate change. The accumulation in the atmosphere of man-made green house gasses, in fact, caused a rise in world temperatures that in certain regions has already brought about biological alterations, documented extinction phenoma and an indiscriminate decay of the environment.

Human beings deforest, set fire and overexploit natural resources; this changes habitats permanently. The building of roads, dams and canals and the expansion of cities has destroyed large areas all over the world.

Natural populations interact among themselves and shape ecosystems, which constitute the main mechanism of air, water and nutritious subastances recycling that is of vital importance for life.

Why Biodiversity is so Important?

Every species has a particular function in the ecosystem.

Certain species can attain energy in different forms: they can produce organic materials, contribute to nourishing the ecocystems, protect the Earth from air pollution and regulate climate change.

Ecosystems play a fundamental role in the improvement of the production of resources, such as the fertility of soils, the pollination of plants and the decay of vegetables and animals. They also have a great impact on the environment: the purification of air and water, the control of weather conditions, like rainfall, drought and other environmental disasters.

Clearly, all these fundamental functions are of vital importance for human survival.

The more an ecosystem is rich in biodiversity, the more it is resistant to environmental stress.

Biodiversity of Species

When one talks about biodiversity, generally refer to this cathegory, because it indicates the diversity of different species that live in a specific environment.

The word species denotes a group of organisms that mate.

The biodiversity of species can be evaluated through the number of different animals that live in a specific area (richness of species), the number of specimen of a single species which live in a specific area (abundance of one species) and the evolutionary relationships between different species (taxonomic diversity).

For example, a human being and a chimpazee have 98% of genes in common, but as everyone knows, they also have characteristics that differentiate one from the other.

Certain areas of the Earth have a greater richness of species than others: at the equator, for instance, it is higher than in the pole regions and in the oceans the species are more numerous in proximity of the shores than in the abysses.

Biodiversity

The Earth is populated by an extraordinary quantity of different living beings.

Biodiversity or biological diversity is the term used to describe this variety of lives and all their natural processes.

Biodiversity specifies the variety of animal and vegetable species that live in the biosphere and it is the result of long evolutionary processes.

The elements which constitute biodiversity can be divided into three cathegories:

• genetic biodiversity
• biodiversity of species
• ecosystem biodiversity

Desertification spares none!

Desertification decrease ecosystems’ capability to survive to climate change. It has dramatic consequences, such as:

• Soil productivity loss
• Degradation and loss of the vegetal cover of arable soil
• Release in the atmosphere of solid particulates ( standstorms and air pollution) with negative consequences on human health and production activities
• Decrease in agricultural an stockbreeding production: malnutrition and hunger

• Migration of people and wars

Air Pollution and Stockbreeding

Thanks to the ease of transporting food from one side of the world to the other, in a period characterised by market globalisation and technological innovation, today Italian population eats Argentinian meat wheareas Japanese and Australian people taste the European products. Food transportation from one country or continent to another is a more and more widespread phenomenon and it is responsible for severe environmental problems.

Livestock production has a pivotal role in climate change. It is blamed for 18% of the global Greenhouse Gasses emissions in the atmosphere generated by human activity.

This share is even higher than GHG emissions released by transports all over the world!!

In particular, stockbreeding generates 9% of carbon dioxide global emissions, both from direct sources, such as the use of electric and fossil energy for the machines and the infrastructures, both from indirect sources like deforestation necessary to extend pastures and arable soil.