Oh! Here's that water paper. Guess it's actually about sustainability. Lol
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Sustainability practice refers to human behavior, individually and collectively, regarding natural resources. Resources on Earth can be loosely grouped into renewable and non-renewable resources. Technically, there is no way to practice sustainability with non-renewable resources; a resource such as petroleum, if used even conservatively over a timeline of sufficient length, will run out completely. There is a limit to crustal nickel mining, palladium reserves, and so on. Renewable resources can be replenished, though they, too, have limits if their use or extraction is accelerated beyond the threshold of recovery. For example, lumber from trees is a renewable resource, and if harvested conservatively and replenished responsibly—if used sustainably—technically, assuming all other conditions remain stable, there is no limit to available lumber. However, pressure on available lumber could exceed rates of replenishment: human overuse and regrowth neglect might outstrip the arboreal population’s ability to replenish itself; and all other conditions realistically would not remain stable as the population dropped—the climate changing, the makeup of the soil and how much it would erode, and other factors could conceivably result in the end of trees. Groundwater is a renewable resource, replenishing itself through precipitation at recharge points, but similarly vulnerable to human pressures and changes in global condition that could render freshwater reserves depleted or unusable, due to overdrawing from reservoirs and pollution throughout the water cycle. Human beings depend on these resources for survival and the continuation of civilization, and all forms of life on the planet depend on water as well. Hence, sustainable practices regarding freshwater resources are essential for continued human activity and planetary health.
In the U.S., agriculture is the top source of pollution in streams, the second-biggest source in wetlands, and the third in lakes (National Resources Defense Council [NRDC], 2023). Farming livestock generates huge amounts of animal waste, with the pig factory farming industry engaging in particularly damaging methods of runoff-based disposal, especially the digging of waste pits known as lagoons, manmade pools into which fecal matter is pumped directly and which are used as fertilizer after breakdown. Pig feces are high in ammonia and bacteria-rich, and accidental spillage as well as leakage and trickle from these lagoons can contaminate the water table and infect groundwater used by nearby communities (Burkholder et al, 2007). Fertilizer from these waste pits is also contaminated with the antibiotics and hormones given to the animals, which lead to antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and related outbreaks of disease.
Legal protections against nonpoint pollution should be shored up and expanded within the Clean Water Act, which is weak against nonpoint pollution (World Economic Forum, 2022), and specific legislation regarding animal waste disposal should be drafted. Techniques for disposal of animal waste and its use as fertilizer, especially in the setting of a factory farm, need to be overhauled and set to specific standards. However, it is not merely enough to set a standard and enforce it; adequate funding should be provided to farms so that they are able to overhaul their existing systems without a loss. Improvement and further innovation in reducing environmental impact and water degradation should be incentivized with tax credits and grants and supported by federal research and development. The availability of these incentives would allow the protections that are put in place more likely to be complied with, to be enforced more effectively, and their violation could then more easily be prosecuted as criminally negligent.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known widely as PFAS, are a wide variety of chemical substances that act as environmental contaminants and take a long time to fully break down. They are widely used in the manufacture of a great variety of industrial products. These factors, taken together, mean that PFAS can be found in low concentrations in environments the world over, and in testable levels in the blood of human beings and animals (Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2023). Even as chemical manufacturer 3M Co. pays out a multibillion-dollar settlement to help ameliorate the costs of filtering PFAS from the nation’s water supplies (Associated Press, 2023), the potential for their further release into their environments exists all over the world in homes and businesses—in products that have not yet begun to break down, but will, as they enter our waste disposal systems or enter ecosystems as trash pollution.
The EPA, the CDC, the FDA, and the Department of Defense are working on further research regarding PFAS, their impact, and how to destroy them and safely remove them from the environment (EPA, 2023), though their strong chemical bonds make the task difficult. Beyond helping to fund these efforts and paying out lawsuits to ameliorate damages, however, companies would do better to take swift action in determining alternatives to the chemical compounds in use now in order to begin an economically sound withdrawal of PFAS from the consumer and industrial markets. 3M, for example, had determined to do so three years ago when the lawsuits came to court, and they expect to be PFAS-free by 2025 (AP, 2023). Companies could also implement something on the order of existing bottle returns or laptop-battery recycling programs with products known to release PFAS into the environment as they break down, to incentivize and assist the consumer in protecting water supplies from durable chemical contamination.
The residential spending dollar is a powerful social and economic signifier, and it is what industry and agriculture both pursue through their actions. Buying single-use plastics, such as water bottled in plastic, food containers, and other packaging has a marked effect on the direction of the economy, agricultural and industrial practices, the environment in general, and on water resources. Only five to ten percent of U.S. plastics are recycled, and recycling centers release wastewater laden with microplastics (Brown et al, 2023). The rest of the plastic waste becomes trash pollution, much of which finds its way into waterways and subsequently the ocean—eighty percent of pollution in the ocean is made up of plastics (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2022) and is set to double from 2020 rates by 2030 (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021).
The average household cannot fully eliminate plastic in the modern world from their daily life, but everyone can minimize their consumption and maximize the responsible elimination of plastics. Replacing bottled water with a commitment to using metal or tempered glass bottles for drinking and bringing cloth or canvas bags to the supermarket—both smaller ones for loose produce and larger for the whole shopping haul—are the simplest and some of the most impactful commitments we can make as consumers to reduce single-use plastics in the consumer landscape. Making a commitment to seeking product design and packaging that minimizes plastic use or eschews it altogether is another important message we send with our dollar, whether shopping in the supermarket, online, or any other retail environment. When purchasing plastic products, looking for and favoring products marked with the EPA’s WaterSense label can help reduce the impact of the plastic on our water resources (EPA, 2023). These choices also help with the PFAS proliferation issues mentioned above.
Maximizing efficiency of use and reducing negative impact on our global water reserves is critical in ensuring continued safe and sufficient supply of drinkable and usable water for human populations and maintaining good stewardship of our planetary environment. Everything on the planet hinges on the health of our waters. In the agricultural sector, which uses and impacts more fresh water than any other, legislative and economic overhaul of accountability and support for the industry is critical if we hope to see positive and continuous change and improvement in its impact. For industry, a culture of self-policing, responsible stewardship, and Earth-first policies and services must be inculcated as an expectation and a norm in order to repair a long history of damage and move forward into a future that can avoid collapse. The residential population must take the responsibility of guiding the aforementioned sectors with the conscientious and directed use of their economic power to shape the market and reduce its biggest contribution to global pollution—the single-use plastics throwaway culture. These are only a sliver of existing challenges and potential solutions, but essential big-picture items in the move towards a sustainable future.
Sources
Associated Press. June 22, 2023. 3M reaches $10.3 billion settlement over contamination of water systems. Retrieved June 27, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/22/1183922303/3m-reaches-10-3-billion-settlement-over-contamination-of-water-systems
Brown, MacDonald, A., Allen, S., & Allen, D. (2023). The potential for a plastic recycling facility to release microplastic pollution and possible filtration remediation effectiveness. Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances, 10, 100309–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hazadv.2023.100309
Burkholder, Bob Libra, Peter Weyer, Susan Heathcote, Dana Kolpin, Peter S. Thome, & Michael Wichman. (2007). Impacts of Waste from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations on Water Quality. Environmental Health Perspectives, 115(2), 308–312. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.8839
Environmental Protection Agency. Jan-Apr 2023. Retrieved June 27, 2023. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained, https://www.epa.gov/pfas/increasing-our-understanding-health-risks-pfas-and-how-address-them, https://www.epa.gov/watersense/how-we-use-water, https://www.epa.gov/watersense/watersense-label
Fava, Marta. May 9, 2022. Ocean plastic pollution an overview: data and statistics. Retrieved June 27, 2023. https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/plastic-pollution-ocean/
Rosane, Olivia. April 4th, 2022. 50% of U.S. lakes and rivers are too polluted for swimming, fishing or drinking. Retrieved June 27, 2023. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/50-of-u-s-lakes-and-rivers-are-too-polluted-for-swimming-fishing-drinking/
United Nations Environment Programme. October 21, 2021. From Pollution to Solution: A global assessment of marine litter and plastic pollution. Retrieved June 27, 2023. https://www.unep.org/resources/pollution-solution-global-assessment-marine-litter-and-plastic-pollution
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