Industrial Revolution In The United Kingdom Mechanics Essay

Industrial revolution began as early as 18th and 19th century in the United Kingdom and since then has evolved greatly and subsequently spread through Europe and other nations in the world. Industries like agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transportation has evolved so much in the last few decades that it has greatly influenced the socioeconomic and the cultural conditions worldwide.

The transition from manual labour to machine-based manufacturing marked the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century. This transformation was significant in textile industries when the traditional manual processes were replaced by automated or mechanized systems, and in mining industries where the iron-making techniques were developed and increased use of refined coal. Canals, roadways, and railways were built to expand the trade and the invention of steam power fuelled by coal, wide usage of water wheels and powered machineries supported the increase in production capacity. Industrialisation affected most of the world in the first two decades of 19th century with the development of more robust metal machine tools that facilitated the production in mass and manufacture of more complex products. The impact of this change on the society was enormous and one of the most important events in the history.

The fact that the human energy was replaced by modern machinery meant that external energy was used to do work. Coal replaced the need of human labour and this altered the environment greatly. Industrialisation not only produced more goods for human consumption but also posed threats to the environment in terms of pollution and exploitation of natural resources in the production process. People in the industrialized countries moved from rural areas to urban cities which resulted in higher standard of living producing larger amount of waste. With the advancement in agricultural industry, many methods and techniques of farming were implemented which caused soil degeneration and the large scale farming led to the destruction of natural habitat of many birds and animals causing an imbalance in the nature.

Industrialisation and the urge for new technologies are often triggered by both needs and greed of man. Activities like manufacturing, mining, transportation not only utilize huge stock of natural resources but also alter the environmental system by piling the stock of wastes and untreated or improperly treated waste pose huge threats to the environment and it's consumers.

A number of studies have shown that excessive landfills are taking a heavy toll on human life. Some of the alarming facts about waste produced in UK are as mentioned (2):

• The average waste produced by UK every day would fill the Trafalgar Square which would likely fill up Lake Windermere in one year
• An average British family produces paper waste worth of 6 trees every year
• UK consumes eight billion cans every year
• England and Wales produce about 350,000 tonnes of clinical waste of which 100,000 tonnes present risk of infection or harm
• Total waste produced by UK is approximately 434 mt/year which can be further classified as follows based on their environmental impact:
• 60% (260 mt)- that can decay, for instance, food, agricultural, and sewage waste
• 39% (170 mt) - that is inert, for instance, glass, plastic, metal, rubber
• 1% (4 mt) - that is hazardous, for instance, lab and chemical waste

The article in Croner's magazine states that just 4% of the world's oceans are now estimated to be free of man's impact and suggested that the only areas of ice near the poles are unaffected but under serious threat. China, in 2006 generated about 1.52 billion tones of industrial waste, which was 13.1 % more than in 2005. The OECD (Organisation for economic Co-operation and Development) reports that the amount of municipal, industrial, and hazardous waste exceeds what can be safely treated and disposed off, and consequently, around 50% of the municipal waste is in the storage awaiting treatment or is dumped in an uncontrolled fashion. (3)

Pollution control board has since then taken all the necessary actions to achieve sustainable development through planned and controlled industrialisation. It was realised in the 1970s that there was some threat in terms of mass production of the products in an unplanned way by industries, consumption of these mass produced products by customers, generation of large amount of waste, and an unsafe way of disposing the hazardous waste. This led to the development of some committee to address the growing issues of industrialisation and waste management. A number of legislations have been put in place over the recent years to closely monitor the industries to adhere to these regulations.

Legislatives and their Implications

According to NatReg, the Environment Agency in England and Wales, SEPA in Scotland and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) in Northern Ireland, about 1.8 million tonnes of electronic and electrical are produced in the UK. Many regulations have been devised to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill and to recover them for reuse or recycle. The two main directives include, WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), and End-of-life vehicles. (4)

WEEE Directive

The WEEE directive is a European directive on waste generated from electrical and electronic appliances. This directive along with RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substance) directive was declared as a law in February 2003 which is aimed at collecting, recycling, and recovering all the types of e-waste (1).The objective of the WEEE EU directive is to reduce the amount of electronic and electrical waste generated being produced and to encourage reuse, recycling and recovery. Industries that manufacture, use, recycle, and recover these products are governed by this legislation.

The key objectives of the WEEE Directive are: IMPLEMENTATION OF WASTE ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONICEQUIPMENT DIRECTIVE IN EU 25, http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/22231-ExeSumm.pdf

• Reduce the disposal of electrical and electronic waste to landfill
• Producers, Manufacturers, or Suppliers to arrange for a free take-back scheme of end-of-life products from 13 August 2005
• Re-design the product to minimise waste and to improve the recyclability
• Achieve the recovery, reuse, and recycling target for different classes of WEEE
• Arrange the logistics for the take-back service and segregate the household wastes for separate collection
• Establish a recovery and treatment facility to process the WEEE including the provisions for financial guarantees on new products in the market

E-waste can be described as unwanted surplus or stock, obsolete, damaged broken electrical or electronic devices encompassing devices ranging from computers and laptops to medical and sports equipments to toys and control equipments. The evolution of advanced technologies has a direct impact on the life of a disposable product. With replacement becoming a lot easier and cheaper in today's market, most consumers would want to buy a new television or a phone rather than taking it to a repair shop.

Every other item a consumer buys has an electronic component in it. 300 million tonnes of waste produced by UK in a year contains 940,000 tonnes of household WEEE which means in a year a UK householder disposes four pieces of WEEE. (5)

In UK alone, about 1 million tonnes of household and industrial e-waste is produced every year which makes up to about 4% of the European municipal waste, and is growing three times faster than any other municipal. The main contribution to this number is from large household appliances which are termed as ‘white good', and make up to 43%. The second largest contributors are from the IT equipments like computers which very rapidly become outdated when a newer version is released, which make up to 39%. With over 2 million television sets being trashed every year, consumer electronics also share a large portion of this waste (6).

Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling (ICER) provides the following data (Table 1) on the average amount of UK's e-waste discarded in 2003.

Table 1: UK E-Waste in 2003 (6)

Avoiding the waste and recovering resources is not all about ‘recycling'. Also, reducing landfill should not be that only factor in driving the need for more innovative responses from industry, government and the community. One should think of the system as a whole and try to make attempts to cut waste and to look beyond ‘Cradle to Grave' and adopt the concept of ‘Cradle to Cradle'.

End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs)

The End-of-Life Vehicles directive came into force on 21 October 2000 and the objective of this directive is to minimize the environmental impact of an end-of-life vehicle by considering new vehicle designs, design for easy disassembly, recover, reuse, and recycle. The key objectives of this directive are (6):

• All ELVs are only treated by authorised dismantlers
• Producers to arrange for a free take-back of all ELVs for new vehicles put on the market after 2002; from 2007 provide free take-back for all vehicles including those put on market before 2002
• Minimize the use of heavy metals in vehicles from July 2003
• Ensure that a minimum of 85% of vehicles are reused or recovered (including energy recovery) and at least 80% must be reused or recycled from 2006, increasing to a 95% reused or recovered (including energy recovery) and 85% reused or recycled by 2015
• De-pollute the vehicles before recycling. This involves extracting petrol, diesel, brake fluid, engine oil, antifreeze, batteries, airbags, mercury-bearing components and catalysts.

It becomes very important to dispose the end-of-life vehicles as they can pose a threat to the environment because of the presence of hazardous materials like lead acid batteries, engine and lubricant oils, brake fluid, catalytic convertors and so on which have to be safely disposed.

In 2002, there were about 30 million motor vehicles in use within UK and every year about 2 million vehicles are registered. With the average life of 13.5 years for a car, in 2000 about 2 million cars and vans reached the end of their useful life either because they were not functional or damaged beyond repair (6).

Cars of modern days are made of various advanced materials which increase the performance of the car and are also cost effective. For instance, the ferrous metals have been replaced by lighter materials like plastics to increase the performance and the aerodynamics of the car. Following chart gives a breakdown of the composition of a car in 1998 (6).

Impact of Directives on the supply chain of the products

Take-Back Schemes

Take-Back Systems is an extended Producer Responsibility in the EU environmental policy, where the producer is responsible for the product throughout its entire life-cycle. White goods or household appliances, for instance washing machines are one of the most used domestic appliances. The market for these machines in some developed countries is still expanding and new technologies have increased their sales. However, the average life-span of the washing machine has decreased. This reduction has encouraged the distributors to take back the old products from the customers and thus has become an environmental focus for many appliance manufacturers.

These collected appliances are segregated and a portion of these units are re-conditioned and are resold. Appliances that cannot be resold in the stores are recycled in an environmentally responsible manner with increased profits. However, a recent study on recycling of white goods in Victoria suggests that transportation costs combined with fluctuating cost of recycling the scrap materials has influenced the feasibility of the take-back, reuse and recycling schemes. (7)

E-waste generated by consumers can be collected in three ways. Municipal sites, in-store retailer take-back and producer take-back schemes. Majority of the waste is collected mostly through producer take-back schemes. Municipal collection sites are normally free for household waste, take-back through retailers is also free but can depend on the purchase of a new product. The producer take-back system applies to heavy appliances and commercial equipments. The schemes that consists of various recyclers and have different transportation firms have been able to survive the competition and have managed the cost while small operates that use single supplier have not been able reduce the contract costs.

Also the success of these schemes depends on the level and ease of understanding of the consumers about collection and financing system. Complicated systems for various appliances may create confusion in the consumers which may affect the efficiency of the scheme. IMPLEMENTATION OF WASTE ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONICEQUIPMENT DIRECTIVE IN EU 25, http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/22231-ExeSumm.pdf

The WEEE and the ELV directive, forces the manufacturers and producers of electrical and electronic equipments and vehicles to think before the product leaves their factory gates rather than considering the impact of the products after it reaches the customers till it's working life. In the take-back schemes, producers also need to facilitate the logistics for the collection, treatment, and safe recycling of their products which is an additional cost to set up a site. Environmentally sound disposal of an equivalent amount of WEEE after the recovery is also very important.

Producers of electronic equipment have always had to design for ease, economy and speed of assembly. The WEEE directive means that it is also now in the producer's interest to carefully consider how products are dismantled at end-of-life. Recycling is a cost that can be significant and now has to be paid for by the producer - usually the manufacturer or importer. The cost of recycling can be influenced by the recycling equipment design and depends on whether the producer can take the benefit of it by collecting and recycling their own equipment at the end-of-life.

The main cost of recycling comes from labour which is required to recover the waste by dismantling the electronic and electrical waste, treat the waste, and recycle it. Easy dismantling of parts can be achieved by using snap fits instead of screws, and by avoiding the metal inserts in plastic moulded parts which would make the plastic non-recoverable.

Calculating the average cost of an electronic or electrical component, should be able to give the approximate cost of reusing or recycling it after the working life. With the decreasing selling price of these parts, recycling most of the end products would cost a lot for the producer.

To comply with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, all electrical and electronic equipment in the market in EU are to be labelled to show that it can no longer be sent to landfill sites. The obligation in the WEEE Directive is forcing a change in the product plans of electrical and electronic equipment manufacturers. Many suppliers are working out ways to ease the recycling of their products by designing equipments featuring a number of demountable components. This allows the manufacturer to reuse the parts returned to them at the end-of-life. A lot of manufacturers are joining compliance schemes where a third party assumes the role of collection and recycling agency. The compliance scheme would take up the responsibilities of a producer of registering and ensuring appropriate records.

If manufacturers take back a large portion of the equipment they sell, that resource can be used to build the next set of products. Such manufacturing strategy can lower the manufacturer's component costs however, added recycling costs mean that users are likely to pay more for the equipment initially.

Some suppliers are already achieving early compliance in a bid to create a green band, and many buyers are embracing the concept of environmental awareness under the banner of ‘corporate social responsibility'. But it is the potential financial gains that go hand in hand with the efficient disposal of products that will capture the attention of many in the supply chain.

It is estimated that the price hikes in computers and TVs by 3% and white goods such as fridges and washing machines by 1% is because of the extra cost of recycling. Dudley Ollis of Environmental Health and Safety at UK trade association quotes that the 3% increase is very less and that the charges for bureaucracy and sorting included, could raise the cost by 10% for some good and says that it is cheaper to manufacture the goods from new rather than recycled materials. Although the amount of this charge to be passed on to the end user is debatable the companies can swallow some of their margins.

The increase in landfill tax and the introduction of an incineration tax in the UK means any hike in the price of electronic goods to recycle them would be offset by the cost of disposing them by other means. Currently the tax-payer pays for the disposal costs of electronic equipment, both financially and through the health and environmental hazards this presents. The WEEE directive has the potential to move these costs to the price paid by the purchaser. Ultimately, the recycling and effective disposal of products may bring prices down. (8)

Several countries have either been late with the transposition of the Directive or have not adopted the Directive and many of the countries that have adopted this directive have simply translated the EU directives, but have specified the way it should function in the legislation when it in practice and hence further communication is needed which is very cumbersome. The countries which trade with the EU nations need coordination in terms of these legislations and causes delay in transactions. IMPLEMENTATION OF WASTE ELECTRIC AND ELECTRONICEQUIPMENT DIRECTIVE IN EU 25, http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/22231-ExeSumm.pdf

Design for Re-cycle and Disassembly

End-of-life disassembly in the recent years has become a matter of importance to gain advantage in terms of both environment and cost. The main objective is to look at the system as a whole and looking at shifting from the flow of materials in an open loop to a closed loop which validates the cradle to cradle approach reducing the environmental impact.

It is considered that the cost of disassembly is significantly higher than the revenues that can be obtained from nonprofessional end-of-life products. If the requirement was to meet the minimum requirement of the law, which is to remove the hazardous components and fluid materials, then only a partly dismantled product would have been left. The part can be further decomposed, but the cost associated with it would increase. Many of the non reusable parts of the computer equipment are shipped to Far East because of availability of cheap labour. This shipping is about 80% of the U.S. electronic scrap production. But, it is also very necessary to ensure, labour standards to perform disassembly operations handling the hazardous materials. In this case both people handling the waste and the environment are at potential risk which calls for acting in a conscious and a responsible way. Hence it becomes very crucial to monitor such waste being exported to other countries and the design for disassembly must be adopted to reduce the costs and impacts. Disassembly modelling for assembly, maintenance, reuse, and recycling, A.J Lambert

The electronic or electrical products are not just different in their functionality but also significantly vary in their material composition. For instance, a TV contains 6% metal and 50% glass whereas a cooker contains 89% metal and only 6% glass. Plastics, Ceramics, Precious Metals are some of the other variations used in electronic or electrical devices (6). Some wastes may also pose serious health hazards to the personnel handling and working on it due to the presence of hazardous contaminants such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, and so on. Unsafe recycling operations also have significant risk levels from such hazardous materials and care has to be taken while leaching materials and poisonous ashes and fumes from the incineration process. The complexities with respect to the type and the amount of material in these products, makes the e-waste difficult to manage and handle.

Consumer Attitude to buy Re-cycled products

WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), performed a survey on some focus groups to analyse their views and opinions on the recycled materials in electrical and electronic equipments and the following were the findings: Report. Consumer Attitudes to the Use of Recycled Materials in Electrical and Electronic Products. August 2008

• The groups preferred factors like good price, specifications, brand, aesthetics, value for money, quality, reliability, and customer service while purchasing the product
• With the recycled material in the products, the focus shifted on factors like functionality, value, style, and brand
• A few groups perceive that the quality of the recycled material is lower than that of the virgin material
• There is also a perception that these products manufactured from recycled materials are highly priced and have less specifications

However, groups had a common view and preferred green products to other products.

Conclusion

What was once considered rubbish, garbage or worthless material, is now being seen as a resource in need of recovery, reuse or recycling. For long, the disposal of non-reutilisation or end-of-life products and their constituent components or materials was being viewed as an inefficient business practice and poor environmental management. There is a great potential of growth in this sector and the current patterns of production and consumption are not ecologically balance and hence not sustainable. It is important for producers and consumers to think how products are conceived, produced, and consumed with a view of using the resources more efficiently.

By far the most desirable objective is to avoid and eliminate waste before it can become an environmental or human health problem. Following are some of the statistical data released by Defra: http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/wastats/archive/mwb200809_statsrelease.pdf, News Release, 5th November 2009

‘The amount of municipal waste collected in England in 2008/09 has decreased by 1.2 million tonnes, 4.1% than that of in 2007/08. The average annual change in municipal waste over the five years to 2008/09 was a decrease of 1.2 per cent.'

‘In total, 49.0 per cent (13.4 million tonnes) of municipal waste had some sort of value (recycling, composting, energy from waste and fuel manufacture) recovered from it in 2008/09, a rise from 45.1 per cent (12.9 million tonnes) in 2007/08.'

‘The proportion of municipal waste being recycled or composted increased from 34.0 per cent in 2007/08 to 36.9 per cent in 2008/09. The proportion of waste incinerated with energy recovery increased from 11.1 per cent in 2007/08 to 12.2 per cent in 2008/09.'

‘The proportion of municipal waste disposed in landfill has continued to decrease, from 54.4 per cent in 2007/08 to 50.3 per cent in 2008/09.'

‘The tonnage of municipal waste disposed of into landfill has also decreased again, from 15.5 million tonnes in 2007/08 to 13.8 million tonnes in 2008/09.' The following graph depicts the amount of waste recycled as against amount of waste non-recycled.

Bibliography

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