Author: Muhammad Ahmad

In sectors that cannot achieve Zero Emissions unilaterally, it may be necessary to build industrial clusters. The input–output analysis leads directly into development of clusters of industries that can use each other’s outputs. Developing effective clusters calls for executives look beyond single industries and make innovative connections among seemingly unrelated potential partners in new industrial clusters. Companies… Continue reading  Build Industrial Clusters

Over the last few years, the members of zero discharge communities and industries have developed a five‐step methodology for implementing Zero Emissions. Pauli’s Breakthroughs (1996) provides a far more comprehensive approach that extends well beyond the manufacturing site. The summary provided here emphasizes the use and impact of a ZD approach at the manufacturing level. Analyze Throughput The first… Continue reading Zero Discharge (Emissions) Methodology

Chemical process and product design engineers, environmental engineers, and consulting engineering firms can play a pivotal role as industries move toward the Zero Emissions or Zero Discharge paradigm, especially firms whose traditional niche has been to treat waste so that it is benign and acceptable for discharge. The role for these engineers in the twenty‐first century is to transform… Continue reading The New Role of Process Engineers and Engineering Firms

To understand why Zero Discharge is a critical component of sustainability, it is important to recognize that one principle of sustainability is the efficient and wise use of resources, especially with regard to limiting the amount and type of resource extraction and subsequent pollution loadings. To see how these are related, it may help to think of… Continue reading Why Zero Discharge Is Critical to Sustainability

The concept of Zero Discharge or Zero Emissions is the key to sustainable development but is by itself a subset of industrial ecology (also see Section 9.2) (see Figure 1.3). Sustainability can be defined as follows: “Sustainable development” is the challenge of meeting human needs for natural resources, industrial products, energy, food, transportation, shelter, and effective waste management while… Continue reading Sustainability, Industrial Ecology, and Zero Discharge (Emissions)

While there are several practical definitions of zero effect or zero discharge (ZD) manufacturing, a ZD system is most commonly understood to be one that discharges no waste from a processing and manufacturing site. In such a manufacturing facility (see Figure 1.2) an absolute minimum amount of waste, “ideally zero,” is generated and leaves the plant. The only… Continue reading Zero Discharge Industries

No defect and zero effect, or something very close to it, is the ultimate goal of P3, while the processes themselves are the tools and pathways to achieve it. Thus, industries were to be reorganized into “clusters” in which the wastes or by‐products of each industrial process’ were fully matched with others industries’ input requirements;… Continue reading The ZDZE Paradigm

Resource efficiency reflects the understanding that current, global, economic growth, and development cannot be sustained with the current manufacturing, production, and consumption patterns. Globally, we are extracting more resources to produce goods than the planet can replenish. Resource efficiency is the reduction of the environmental impact from the production and consumption of these goods, from… Continue reading  Resource Efficiency

In this book, we define pollution prevention fairly broadly as any action that prevents the release of harmful materials to the environment. This definition manifests itself in the form of a pollution prevention hierarchy, with safe disposal forms at the base of the pyramid and minimizing the generation of waste at the source at the… Continue reading Defining Pollution Prevention

A waste is defined as an unwanted by‐product or damaged, defective, or superfluous material of a manufacturing process. Most often, in its current state, it has or is perceived to have no value. It may or may not be harmful or toxic if released to the environment. Pollution is any release of waste to environment… Continue reading Waste as Pollution