http://www.enn.com/greenb.html?id=1303New Developments in Sustainable Technology
January 18, 2007 — By George Furukawa
Sustainable technology is making significant advances across several industries -- and that's encouraging news for a nation that is largely dependent upon countries outside of the United States for energy. So exactly what kind of sustainable technology is out there?
Here is what several experts have to say:
Curtis J. Sparks, P.E. is president of North American Wetland Engineering (NAWE) of White Bear Lake, Minnesota and EcoCheck. NAWE is a pioneer in the development of engineered wetlands for wastewater treatment and remediation of contaminated sites. They are recognized worldwide for their contributions to environmental preservation and restoration.
Using Ecological Practices to Sustain the Environment and Development
"Sustainable development through sustainable designs for water and wastewater infrastructure is a means of accomplishing balance," said Sparks. "Sustainable means that when removing something from a system it has to be replaced at the same rate. If it is not replaced, balance is not achieved."
According to Sparks, removing trees from the forest faster than they can grow and replace themselves is not sustainable. Words like consumption, harvesting, mining and withdrawal represent sustainability issues, Sparks added.
But how do we meet human needs of food, water, housing without exhausting or overloading the key resources upon which our natural systems depend?
"The water we mine (extract) from the earth and flush to our wastewater treatment systems, which is then dumped into the river is not a sustainable process," said Sparks. "The water dumped to the river is adding more pollutants to our already impaired waters and there is no water being returned to our underground aquifers. Each home in a development that goes on the sewer line exhausts more of our water resources."
We now have ways to manage our wastewater from residential developments in a way that is sustainable, according to Sparks. We can extract groundwater, consume it, treat the waste products and place them on the land for growing things, explained Sparks. Then we can recycle that clean water back into the soil -- thus creating a sustainable system, he added.
"Traditional wastewater systems sometimes called "septic systems" require lots of land for soil to treat wastewater," noted Sparks. "Often as a result of this process, the soil eventually plugs. This technology has lead to the "Large Lot" zoning that is consuming land across the country at an enormous rate."
Recognizing that housing now consumes more land than any other human use, we need to be more judicious by reducing per/house consumption of land while conserving as much of the land for other uses, according to Sparks. Biofuels: A Promising New Energy Source
"As the global population grows, so does the need for more energy sources," said Koukoulas. "To sustain the demand, without stressing our planet further, new solutions, that are more environmentally friendly, are needed."
Koukoulas noted that one of the major solutions emerging is bio-based fuels, that is, fuels made from plant matter such as corn and other agricultural products and by-products. The United States is currently producing about four billion gallons of ethanol per year, which represents about three percent of our total gasoline consumption, according to Koukoulas.
"Over the next six years, ethanol production is expected to double to about eight billion gallons," said Koukoulas. "While this represents progress, it unfortunately means that it will be still be a small fraction of total liquid fuel consumed in the United States. Corn is the predominant feedstock used to make ethanol in the United States."I am not so sure about corn/ethanol is the ultimate solution to all our problems, but its better than oil I guess.
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