What if I plant a tree?

It's a recycling fashion. Or a state of mind for many of us in 21^st century. But let's look at the facts and figures, and then meet the real problem.

Here's an example: a tree absorbs between 7.5 to 13 kg CO₂ per year. Of course no one could еstimate whether it is more, less or enough. But everyone could estimate the efficiency of a tree, if we mention the yearly CO₂ footprint of a milk cow - about 5 000 kg CO₂ eq. Hence my question: how many trees we need to plant, just to cover the yearly emission of one cow?

Well, recycling is good, isn't it?

Actually, it's not a matter of recycling the stuff you bought, but now you don't need. It's a matter of not buying that stuff at all. When we look back to the production and distribution chain, we will see why recycling of packages is not helping too much.

The industry is manufacturing products, while emitting enormous volumes of toxic waste (both liquid and solid) and green house gases. Then the product goes to the consumer and he fashionably recycles the packaging. The thing that should worry you as a consumer is that for every recycled garbage can, the industry produces 70! Yes, seventy garbage cans full of waste!

What about the industrial waste?

Industrial waste is the real problem that should be solved. The trend here is called "waste management", which is actually the only way to go on large scale. Waste management includes toxic gas sequestration, CO₂ mitigation and utilization, wastewater treatment, solid waste recycling, etc.

A lot can be done, in utilization of, otherwise toxic, nitrogen oxides. There are plenty of biological species that can survive in variety of extreme environments. Examples of extreme environments are toxic industrial wastewaters, high temperature CO₂ airflows, heavy metal rich solid waste, etc.

There is a biological solution for every problem that humankind have created so far. There are microalgae, able to survive in extreme concentrations of cadmium or chrome and bacteria that thrive in strong mineral acids and boiling liquids.

We could finally say, that there is a matter of consumer behaviour, that could help save our environment, but let's face it - the real problem is coming from the industrial waste. Industrial plants should realise their corporate responsibility and do the implementation of best available technologies in waste management.

Crisis as an opportunity for green technology implementation

The last twelve months were maybe not so great for your business. You could blame the financial crisis or the consumption decline. But actually, it doesn’t matter, because the question is whether your business will survive or not.

After the financial crisis many things will not be the same, many (used to be) stable businesses will be gone. They will be gone, not because of the crisis itself.They will suffer from their own rigidity and lack of adaptation skills for the new green consumer era.

The need for reduction of non-renewable energy sources was obvious even for the much criticized autocrat - Shah of Iran in the early ’70s. Now, forty years later, are you still not convinced that the industrial processes should go in greener direction?

Even though renewable energy technologies are applicable, these are still thought of as some exotic fruit, a fashion may be. Yes, many of them need a few more years to be viable and to make sense to your business, but it is not only the CSR that counts. Let’s take, for example, the algae biodiesel technology - it is a quite simple concept, but it took over thirty years to be applied in pilot plants. It is not that expensive (after all you need only water and sun, and the hole in the ground), and you get several times more biofuel compared to average plant source of oil, based solely on CO2 mitigation.

Crisis is a moment of evaluation and hard decisions, but you could make it a time for green technology implementation and good decisions. Now is the exact moment for real business model re-evaluation. Do you think you could end up greener and in addition survive the crisis?

Yes, you can.