Green Earth [Paperback]

Writer's Biography

Karen Kennedy Samoranos is an author, who co-manages a music education business in the Bay Area with her husband, Clifford, focusing on jazz theory and live stage performance for children ages 5 through 18. She has four adult children, and two young grandchildren. In her off hours, she hikes, runs daily, is an avid fisherman, and motorcyclist (both dirt and street), and is an advocate for regular exercise, red wine and whole foods. You can visit her blog at: http://karenkennedysamoranos.wordpress.com.

Green Earth

Industrial Water Pollution

          It is obvious that the increases in industrial expansion are the main causes of water pollution in Thailand due to the fact that the government shows their lacks of management and regulation. Factories dispose waste into natural water resource without processing, resulting in the destruction of aquatic ecosystem. This essay will identify the negative effects of water pollution in Thailand and suggest possible solutions.

The environmental effect is the most obvious of all. Shanley Knox, a journalist, said that 92.68 percent of the total water in Thailand was put at risk as the results of industrial, 6.87 percent of the bodies water was highly polluted especially in urban areas. As mention before, water pollution has terminated many water-based lives. For instant, animals may accidentally eat a plastic bag and suffer to dead. Consequently, this leads to the disruption of natural food chains.

Secondly, the country’s economy has an impact on this too. Despite the fact that industrial and agricultural are the main causes of water pollution, government is responsible for ensuring the standard quality of water. Therefore, the Thai government has to spend a large amount of money filtering polluted water. Another economic effect is on tourism.  Many tourist attractions are disturbed as a result of littering both from foreigners and Thai people, which also causes economic problem. Imagine Phuket beach full with plastic bags and aluminum cans, it is certainly not a nice picture to see, especially by local people.

Another direct effect from water pollution is on health. People are likely to have a disease from ingesting unprocessed water. Many bacteria and microorganisms are able to live in a highly toxic environment because it favors them to reproduce and replicate.

It is clear that water pollution has many negative effects; therefore, it is crucial that this problem will be solved before it is too late. This part of the essay will purpose possible solutions.

The Thai government has noticed the situation and been aware of the outcome for a time. Nevertheless, it has not been done in highest quality. According to UNESCO, their case study reported that in 2000, the cabinet had initiated the national water policy for conserving and maintaining water resources. Several of them can be summarized as follow:

• Accelerate the promulgation of the Draft Water Act.
• Set up water management organization both at national and river basin level.
• Promote water related topic in all level of education.
• Give financial supports to any action in line with the national policy

  (UNESCO.org)

It is clear that despite these actions, the policy has not been properly followed. The situation demands for an improvement and carefulness.

First of all, the government needs to enforce the law. Officers could fine any citizen who disobeys the law. In this way, people will be aware of polluting the water both by accidently and intentionally. The Government should consider this option as their priority due to the fact that it is the government’s direct responsibility.

Secondly, any financial, technical, or informational support, including education, should be offered to people who need, especially farmers in rural areas. Many times local people do things that were harmful to the environment without knowing; thus, it is unfair for farmers to be fined by government officers. Education can help people from being exploited and giving fairness. Also, it is unquestionable that any support, particularly education, will contribute in higher quality of lives of local people.

Another solution is to promote citizens’ conscience. One of Thai people’s attitudes is “sabai sabai”, which translates as “take it easy-no worries” (Knox). Therefore, many people think that their actions are insignificant comparing to size of the issue. If every people think like this, it will definitely lead to a major problem.

Finally, importance should be given more to the issue. Thailand has the technological potential to manage its wastewater, but no one cares. Because of the less obvious effects, people are not able to visualize the overall picture of the problem. Without the picture, it is difficult to have people’s interests in helping cleaning the pollution. A reason is that most residents in big cities, like Bangkok, have access to infrastructure, which provides clean water. This makes people think that water is abundant and has no serious problem.

In conclusion, it is clear that industrial water pollution a many negative effect to Thailand, but it is not too late to start the actions. The environment has the most impact. Many aquatic ecosystems are destroyed as a result of mainly industrial expansion. If people have enough conscience to consider the results of their actions and the government’s policy is done with highest quality, the problem will be certainly resolved.

Deforestation in Thailand and How to Solve

     “Tropical deforestation is responsible for about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than all the cars, trucks, planes, boats and trains in the world combined.” (greenpeace organization) Now, over 75% of the forests in Thailand are gone because of deforestation. (wrm organization)  This is a major environmental problem in Thailand. Deforestation is removing or cutting down forest area. There are many cause of deforestation. People cut down trees for industry and space for farming and living. Wood industries are growing continuously in Thailand. Deforestation can cause natural disaster such as flood. It also affects wild life. We should find a way to stop deforestation or we will be facing disaster. 

     Deforestation causes many environmental problems in Thailand including air pollution and natural disasters. It is one of the causes of the global warming. In the atmosphere, there are gases such as methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, and ozone which help to control the heat loss to the space. Having too much of these gases will keep the heat in the Earth. Trees can help to absorb these gases. Trees can absorb carbon dioxide and replace it with oxygen. They also help to absorb pollution in the air. The water cycle is also affected by the deforestation. Trees absorb the water under the ground and release it to the air which produces atmospheric moisture. So if there are no trees the water in the soil will not be adsorb up which causes flood and landslide. As you can see, Thailand is facing with flood every year. Flood destroy people’s house and effect the economic. Tropical rainforests also produce about 30% of fresh water on earth. (coolearth organization) Insects and other wild animals are affected from deforestation. They have no places where they can live.

     There are many causes of deforestation in Thailand. The major cause is the growth of population. As population increase the demand for food is also increase. The forest needed to be cut down for people to find space for farming. Also, people will need more space for living. So the forest is replaced with people’s house. Another cause of deforestation is the wood industry is growing very fast. The demand of wood is increasing every year. This includes the increasing of paper demand. The government is not taking this problem serious enough. There are still many illegal logging industries in Thailand.

     There are many ways to solve this problem. One easy way is to recycle things that are made from trees. Use the brands that made papers from recycle papers. Government need to give education to people about recycling. Many people still don’t know why recycle is important. Recycling can help to save natural resources such as trees. While stop cutting down trees seem to be impossible because trees are important for industry, also affect job opportunities, we could try to cut down less trees. Making a law to control logging is a good way to control deforestation.  The law should prevent the forest are that should not be cut down from being cut down. But in Thailand laws don’t seem to work, so making laws is not a good solution. We also could find a new way for farming to prevent cutting down more trees. There are many places for farming without cutting down trees. We could lower the demand of food that used a lot of spaces to farm for example eats less cows.  Another interesting solution for deforestation is to replant trees or we called “reforestation”. This solution seems to be the most realistic solution. In many countries, reforestation is helping to increase the forest area. It takes a lot of time for trees to grow. So we need to stat reforestation as soon as we can.

     Deforestation problem is not hard to solve if everyone take care of it seriously. Everyone needs to know that they are affected by deforestation. No one wants to see flood or mud flow happening in Thailand. This problem needs to be solved immediately or more bad things will happen to us. Everyone needs to help solving this problem before it is too late. As Mahatma Gandhi once said “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”

How LCA is used

LCA is mostly used to support business strategy and R&D, as input to product or process design, in education and for labeling. LCA will be continuously combine with the built environment as tools such as the European ENSLIC Building project guidelines for buildings or developed and implemented, which provide practitioners guidance on methods to implement LCI data into the planning and design process.

4 main phases of LCA

There are 4 main phases of LCA:

1.    Goal and scope

An LCA starts with a clear statement of the goal and scope of the study, which sets out the context of the study and explains how and to whom the results are to be communicated. This is a key step and the ISO standards require that the goal and scope of an LCA be clearly defined and compatible with the application. 

 

2.    Life cycle inventory

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis involves creating an inventory of flows from and to nature for a product system. Inventory flows include inputs of water, energy, and raw materials, and releases to air, land, and water. To develop the inventory, a flow model of the technical system is constructed using data on inputs and outputs. The flow model is regularly illustrated with a flow chart that includes the activities that are going to be evaluate in the relevant supply chain and gives a clear picture of the technical system boundaries.

 

3.    Life Cycle impact assessment

Inventory analysis is followed by impact assessment. This phase of LCA is aimed at evaluating the importance of potential environmental impacts based on the LCI flow results. Classical life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) consists of selection of impact categories, category indicators, and characterization models, the classification stage, where the inventory factors are sorted and assigned to specific impact categories and impact measurement, where the categorized LCI flows are characterized, using one of many possible LCIA systems, into common equivalence units that are then summed to provide an overall impact category total.

4.    Interpretation

Life Cycle Interpretation is a systematic technique to identify, quantify, check, and evaluate information from the results of the life cycle inventory and/or the life cycle impact assessment. The results from the inventory analysis and impact assessment are summarized during the interpretation phase. The outcome of the interpretation phase is a set of conclusions and recommendations for the study. According to ISO 14040:2006, the interpretation should identification of importance issues based on the results of the LCI and LCIA phases of an LCA, evaluation of the study considering completeness, sensitivity and consistency checks and conclusions, limitations and recommendations.

What is Life-cycle Assessment?

          Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a way to estimate the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or service. LCAs can help avoid a narrow outlook on environmental concerns by captivating an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases, evaluating the potential impacts associated with identified inputs and releases and clarify the results to help make a more informed decision. The goal of LCA is to compare the full range of environmental effects distributing to products and services in order to improve processes, support policy and provide a sound basis for informed decisions.