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Getting rid of waste
April 1 9 7 3 • Volume 4
• Number 4
Getting Rid of Waste Before it fades into history and along with other doomsday literature (for that is what it was), it might be as well to give one more thought to the Forrester and Meadows studies for the Club of Rome on where our current activities are leading us. When a popular expos6 of the findings was published under the title The Limits to Growth last year, it was found that we were doomed to run out of essential but limited resources, or be swamped by uncontrollable pollution by the turn of the century, or shortly thereafter, reactions were predictable. At one extreme the imminent decimation, if not destruction of mankind and a return to a primitive agrarian society for the survivors (if any) of the crash, was greeted with a certain ghoulish satisfaction. It satisfied the basic love humans seem to have for frightening themselves (manifested both in gruesome fairy tales for children and the passion some adults have for horror films). At the other extreme there was the euphoric view represented by John Maddox, among others, in his The Doomsday Syndrome, that all was well and that technology would automatically take care of all our ills as the need arose. Most people sat somewhere between these extremes, were disturbed by all these conflicting claims, and hoped that somebody who was in a position to know would find out what was going on and do something about it. Futurology is a notoriously hazardous profession. The modern world is an exceedingly complicated organism and to project present trends even a decade forward, the situation has to be grossly oversimplified and most of the parameters have to be guessed. No wonder completely opposite claims can be made when different people examine the same facts. It might be concluded, in despair, that a visit to the palmist is as useful as any number of computer exercises, and much cheaper. Although Meadows did not publish the details of his programme at the time, it was claimed in The Limits
M e t a l s in S o l w a y Firth Vancouver Conference
Macmillan Journals Limited
•
Canadian •
to Growth that very substantial changes could be made to the assumptions without affecting the conclusions. Some evidence that this was so was given in the manipulation of the estimated quantity of mineral reserves unknown, but remaining to be discovered. A team from Shell, however, running a comparable programme through their computer, decided that the model was much less stable than that, and that the outcome could be influenced if changes are made to our current practices. This, of course, is a rather more complicated way of saying what the optimists say, that future problems can be solved by technological advances. Perhaps a less suspect source, the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University has questioned the assumptions made in The Limits to Growth. It is necessary to accept a fundamentally optimistic view. Extreme pessimism is a recipe for inaction: if nothing we can do now will save human society from collapse then, like the man in the condemned cell, we might as well enjoy a hearty last breakfast. Extreme pessimists end up being basically on the same side as the extreme optimist who believes that nothing need be done and the 'system', or market forces, or something, will take care of all problems without any effort on his part. The only practical difference between them is that the optimist has a more enjoyable life. Anyone holding less extreme views will acknowledge that the world's resources are limited, that we cannot ignore pollution, that we cannot support an ever expanding population and that whatever else happens, our practices and habits of mind will not be the same next year as they were last. That accepted, the chief spectrum of opinion concerns the degree to which international agreement and government intervention are needed to manage the world's affairs to the best long-term advantage. A completely laissez faire policy was abandoned many years ago. Both internationally and nationally there has been regulation of certain fisheries in the interest of maximizing the harvest, as in the
Seabirds
L a w of t h e S e a
•
Prospects for IMCO •
P o r t P h i l l i p Bay
60p U.K.
Getting Rid of Waste News Prospects for the IMCO Conference Russians and Americans in the Bering Sea Pipelines in Port Phillip Bay Oil Pollution: Tracing the Culprits DDT, PCBs and Australia's Westernport Bay Another Boom for BP Detecting Trace Elements in Seawater Heavy Metals in British Waters Chinese Clams Clog United States Rivers Oil Shortage Could Hit Conservationists Demand for Seal Protection Fisheries in the Future--the Vancouver Conference Reports Law of the Sea Barbara Hoflman
page 49
51 51 51 52 52 52 53 53 54 54 54 55 56
Trace Metals in Solway Firth Sediments E. H. Perkins, J. R. S. Gilchrist, O. J. Abbott and W. Ha~crow
59
Canadian Seabird Research D. N. Nettleship
62
north-east Atlantic, for more than half a century. There have been international agreements aimed at reducing oil pollution from tankers during the last quartercentury. The sermon preached in these columns has always been that rational management of all our resources is vital. Pollution control is only one ingredient since any human activity impinges on all others. If wastes are not discharged to the sea, how else are they to be disposed of? Is the disposal of them in some other way more or less damaging on balance? These are matters that need dispassionate analysis and a simplistic, emotional reaction about pollution can almost be guaranteed not to produce the right answers. The analysis must be comprehensive. Some of the solutions proposed to reduce certain kinds of pollution demand industrial processes that would involve the use of energy whether it be derived from gas, coal, nuclear power or any other source. In a world with a looming energy crisis, is it more advantageous to use that energy for more vital purposes and tolerate the pollution damage, or is that damage so critical that other things must be sacrificed to limit it? The pollution debate cannot be separated from the agitation about rational use of the world's resources in general. The British government is said to have taken the Meadows report very seriously, but although it has a f a i r y good record on pollution control, none of its actions so far indicate that the full implications of comprehensive resource and environmental management have yet sunk in. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology, Sir Alan Cottrell, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, said in February that in the scientific sense there is no worry that material resources will be 50
exhausted, but the price will increase (Nature, 241: 418, 1973). Does this mean that the government relies on market forces rationing scarce materials by price? If the use to which they are put is to depend on what the public will pay for, there is no guarantee that they will be put to the best use unless public values are educated. More than this, if scarce commodities are to be rationed by price why, when petrol will be prohibitively expensive in 20-30 years time as world oil resources are depleted (see this issue, p. 54), is there concern in the United States to reduce global lead pollution from petrol additives or a rush to build new road systems in Britain? The privately-owned, petrol driven automobile will be obsolete within a very few decades. If, as almost everyone agrees, we are within sight of the end of a good many of the world's finite resources, can we envisage the indefinite continuation of a high consumption, throw-away economy? Obviously not; yet every country, with the possible exception of Tanzania, seeks to expand its economy. In Britain, the three main political parties, all of which seek to improve the condition of the poor, aim to ameliorate their condition in varying degrees out of the proceeds of economic expansion. But if expansion is prohibited, whether because of diminishing world finite resources, or pollution, or anything else, we must face up to the consequences of moving into a static, if not a declining economy, instead of an expanding one. Under those circumstances, improvement of the condition of the poor, on a national or an international scale, can only be at the expense of the rich. Human nature being what it is, it is not surprising that the international and national rich regard this as a levelling down, not a levelling up, and therefore a bad thing. But if this is an inevitable corollary of present trends, have governments given thought to how a change, at least of national attitudes, can be introduced, not as a revolution but as an evolution? Evidently not. While it will not solve world problems, much could be done at a national level to educate public opinion and prepare it for change. A good deal of correspondence from the United States, where in some respects there is more awareness of these needs than there is in Britain, is on notepaper with the printed footnote that the paper is recycled from paper waste. Some Local Authorities in Britain collect clean waste paper separate from the rest of the garbage. It is even economically profitable for them to do so. If the central government insisted that all did this, a modest start would be made to educate the public in the virtues of conservation of resources, and much more could be done in this direction without diffficulty--as a matter of education as much as of economics. Some consideration might also be given to the practices of the advertising industry. Is it in the public interest that enormous sums should be spent on convincing people that they should maximize their consumption of resources? Probably not, but what is government prepared to do about it? Experience of the campaign against smoking, as a public health measure, indicates that governments are prepared to devote much less effort (as measured by money) to abating the practice than the tobacco industry was in promoting it. We cannot be optimistic therefore.
It cannot be denied that these are such thorny subjects, given the way the world has developed, that it is asking a lot for any government to deal realistically with them. In many countries it has to look to the next election and is therefore bound to concentrate on short-term problems. Even in those countries where the government is assured of a long period of office, it cannot move far ahead of public opinion and the conventional philosophy. Yet any responsible politician must see beyond his own term of office and much could be done to prepare the public for a different sort of world than that which we have experienced in the last few decades without arousing political controversy. The absence of even modest action in this direction suggests that governments have been so preoccupied with epiphenomena and immediate problems that they have not yet started to look ahead, let alone develop a management plan for their national affairs and the wider international problems. It is about time they did so.
Prospects for the IMCO Conference A new convention to replace existing measures on oil pollution at sea is likely to emerge from the October conference of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization on marine pollution, according to Mr J. N. Archer, head of the Marine Division of the Department of Trade and Industry. Speaking at a symposium on marine pollution organized by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects in February, Mr Archer said that a new comprehensive agreement is likely to replace the 1954 convention with its 1969 amendments that at present limit the discharge of oil at sea. (Many countries have still to enforce the 1969 amendments which were only adopted in Britain late last year; see Marine Pollution Bulletin, 4 (2): 20, 1973.) Mr Archer also said that the new agreement will almost certainly include a much more effective requirement than in the 1954 agreement that governments should provide shore reception facilities for oily residues. The aim of the conference, he pointed out, is to 'achieve by 1975 if possible but certainly by the end of the decade, the complete elimination of the wilful and intentional pollution of the seas by oil and noxious substances other than oil and the minimization of accidental spills'. How this is to be achieved is still a matter of argument. Some governments, Mr Archer said, believed that a total ban is the only solution, but a number of others believe that if the 1969 amendments are properly enforced they will provide a sufficient solution. Under the 1969 amendments, 60 litres of oil and water mixture containing not more than 100 parts per million oil can be released per mile. Such a slick, Mr Archer said, disappears in about two hours and allows the load-on-top system, used by 80 per cent of the world's tankers, to be used.
According to Mr Archer, it is probably true to say 'that if these amendments were enforced, the problem of deliberate oil pollution from ships would be very largely solved'. A total ban on all discharges may prove prohibitively expensive, Mr Archer pointed out. A much cheaper solution such as the 1969 amendments might still produce a substantial improvement in the situation. Mr Archer also pointed out that while some 1.5 million tons of oil are discharged into the sea by ships each year, the amount reaching the seas from the land may be twice that amount, while an even larger proportion may reach the sea as air-borne pollution from such sources as oil burning power stations and motor cars. 'The total quantity discharged,' Mr Archer said, 'has been estimated to amount to some 25 million tons a year, and it is reasonable to believe that a substantial proportion of this ultimately reaches the seas'. But October's London conference is not only concerned with oil pollution. For the first time the conference will discuss 'noxious substances other than oil' internationally. The United Nations committee GESAMP (joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution) is currently identifying hundreds of potentially hazardous substances and classifying them under a number of regulations for carriage and discharge according to the danger they present. 'Wide differences of opinion as to suitable treatment are already emerging internationally, and the whole question of definition and treatment of noxious substances other than oil is likely to be a lively one at the conference.'
Russians and Americans in the Bering Sea The sea ice, sea surface and atmospheric conditions of the Bering Sea have been measured by the Academy of Sciences of the USA and USSR in joint programme. Both ships and aircraft have been used in the operation which lasted from February 15 to March 7. The experiment--one of the results of last August's US/USSR working group on satellite meteorology-is intended to obtain and exchange microwave measurements of the sea surface at varying temperatures and sea states, the salinity, thickness, roughness and age of the sea ice, and the water content of the atmosphere. Results may help produce a better understanding of weather patterns in the Bering Sea. It is also hoped that the measurements from microwave radiometers mounted on the aircraft can be compared to information from satellite borne instruments so that the value of each in meteorology can be assessed.
Pipelines in Port Phillip Bay Esso Australia are distributing a report with the pride of a new father handing out cigars. T i t l e d 'Report on the Impact of the Ethane Pipeline on the Marine Ecosystem of Port Phillip Bay', it was compiled by Jeanette Watson of the National Museum of Victoria after only eight hours of murky scuba diving. The 29 km pipeline is the first to cross Port Phillip Bay and carries ethane from the Gippsland fields via Westernport to the refinery complex at Altona, south-west of Melbourne. 51
• Number 4
Getting Rid of Waste Before it fades into history and along with other doomsday literature (for that is what it was), it might be as well to give one more thought to the Forrester and Meadows studies for the Club of Rome on where our current activities are leading us. When a popular expos6 of the findings was published under the title The Limits to Growth last year, it was found that we were doomed to run out of essential but limited resources, or be swamped by uncontrollable pollution by the turn of the century, or shortly thereafter, reactions were predictable. At one extreme the imminent decimation, if not destruction of mankind and a return to a primitive agrarian society for the survivors (if any) of the crash, was greeted with a certain ghoulish satisfaction. It satisfied the basic love humans seem to have for frightening themselves (manifested both in gruesome fairy tales for children and the passion some adults have for horror films). At the other extreme there was the euphoric view represented by John Maddox, among others, in his The Doomsday Syndrome, that all was well and that technology would automatically take care of all our ills as the need arose. Most people sat somewhere between these extremes, were disturbed by all these conflicting claims, and hoped that somebody who was in a position to know would find out what was going on and do something about it. Futurology is a notoriously hazardous profession. The modern world is an exceedingly complicated organism and to project present trends even a decade forward, the situation has to be grossly oversimplified and most of the parameters have to be guessed. No wonder completely opposite claims can be made when different people examine the same facts. It might be concluded, in despair, that a visit to the palmist is as useful as any number of computer exercises, and much cheaper. Although Meadows did not publish the details of his programme at the time, it was claimed in The Limits
M e t a l s in S o l w a y Firth Vancouver Conference
Macmillan Journals Limited
•
Canadian •
to Growth that very substantial changes could be made to the assumptions without affecting the conclusions. Some evidence that this was so was given in the manipulation of the estimated quantity of mineral reserves unknown, but remaining to be discovered. A team from Shell, however, running a comparable programme through their computer, decided that the model was much less stable than that, and that the outcome could be influenced if changes are made to our current practices. This, of course, is a rather more complicated way of saying what the optimists say, that future problems can be solved by technological advances. Perhaps a less suspect source, the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University has questioned the assumptions made in The Limits to Growth. It is necessary to accept a fundamentally optimistic view. Extreme pessimism is a recipe for inaction: if nothing we can do now will save human society from collapse then, like the man in the condemned cell, we might as well enjoy a hearty last breakfast. Extreme pessimists end up being basically on the same side as the extreme optimist who believes that nothing need be done and the 'system', or market forces, or something, will take care of all problems without any effort on his part. The only practical difference between them is that the optimist has a more enjoyable life. Anyone holding less extreme views will acknowledge that the world's resources are limited, that we cannot ignore pollution, that we cannot support an ever expanding population and that whatever else happens, our practices and habits of mind will not be the same next year as they were last. That accepted, the chief spectrum of opinion concerns the degree to which international agreement and government intervention are needed to manage the world's affairs to the best long-term advantage. A completely laissez faire policy was abandoned many years ago. Both internationally and nationally there has been regulation of certain fisheries in the interest of maximizing the harvest, as in the
Seabirds
L a w of t h e S e a
•
Prospects for IMCO •
P o r t P h i l l i p Bay
60p U.K.
Getting Rid of Waste News Prospects for the IMCO Conference Russians and Americans in the Bering Sea Pipelines in Port Phillip Bay Oil Pollution: Tracing the Culprits DDT, PCBs and Australia's Westernport Bay Another Boom for BP Detecting Trace Elements in Seawater Heavy Metals in British Waters Chinese Clams Clog United States Rivers Oil Shortage Could Hit Conservationists Demand for Seal Protection Fisheries in the Future--the Vancouver Conference Reports Law of the Sea Barbara Hoflman
page 49
51 51 51 52 52 52 53 53 54 54 54 55 56
Trace Metals in Solway Firth Sediments E. H. Perkins, J. R. S. Gilchrist, O. J. Abbott and W. Ha~crow
59
Canadian Seabird Research D. N. Nettleship
62
north-east Atlantic, for more than half a century. There have been international agreements aimed at reducing oil pollution from tankers during the last quartercentury. The sermon preached in these columns has always been that rational management of all our resources is vital. Pollution control is only one ingredient since any human activity impinges on all others. If wastes are not discharged to the sea, how else are they to be disposed of? Is the disposal of them in some other way more or less damaging on balance? These are matters that need dispassionate analysis and a simplistic, emotional reaction about pollution can almost be guaranteed not to produce the right answers. The analysis must be comprehensive. Some of the solutions proposed to reduce certain kinds of pollution demand industrial processes that would involve the use of energy whether it be derived from gas, coal, nuclear power or any other source. In a world with a looming energy crisis, is it more advantageous to use that energy for more vital purposes and tolerate the pollution damage, or is that damage so critical that other things must be sacrificed to limit it? The pollution debate cannot be separated from the agitation about rational use of the world's resources in general. The British government is said to have taken the Meadows report very seriously, but although it has a f a i r y good record on pollution control, none of its actions so far indicate that the full implications of comprehensive resource and environmental management have yet sunk in. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology, Sir Alan Cottrell, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, said in February that in the scientific sense there is no worry that material resources will be 50
exhausted, but the price will increase (Nature, 241: 418, 1973). Does this mean that the government relies on market forces rationing scarce materials by price? If the use to which they are put is to depend on what the public will pay for, there is no guarantee that they will be put to the best use unless public values are educated. More than this, if scarce commodities are to be rationed by price why, when petrol will be prohibitively expensive in 20-30 years time as world oil resources are depleted (see this issue, p. 54), is there concern in the United States to reduce global lead pollution from petrol additives or a rush to build new road systems in Britain? The privately-owned, petrol driven automobile will be obsolete within a very few decades. If, as almost everyone agrees, we are within sight of the end of a good many of the world's finite resources, can we envisage the indefinite continuation of a high consumption, throw-away economy? Obviously not; yet every country, with the possible exception of Tanzania, seeks to expand its economy. In Britain, the three main political parties, all of which seek to improve the condition of the poor, aim to ameliorate their condition in varying degrees out of the proceeds of economic expansion. But if expansion is prohibited, whether because of diminishing world finite resources, or pollution, or anything else, we must face up to the consequences of moving into a static, if not a declining economy, instead of an expanding one. Under those circumstances, improvement of the condition of the poor, on a national or an international scale, can only be at the expense of the rich. Human nature being what it is, it is not surprising that the international and national rich regard this as a levelling down, not a levelling up, and therefore a bad thing. But if this is an inevitable corollary of present trends, have governments given thought to how a change, at least of national attitudes, can be introduced, not as a revolution but as an evolution? Evidently not. While it will not solve world problems, much could be done at a national level to educate public opinion and prepare it for change. A good deal of correspondence from the United States, where in some respects there is more awareness of these needs than there is in Britain, is on notepaper with the printed footnote that the paper is recycled from paper waste. Some Local Authorities in Britain collect clean waste paper separate from the rest of the garbage. It is even economically profitable for them to do so. If the central government insisted that all did this, a modest start would be made to educate the public in the virtues of conservation of resources, and much more could be done in this direction without diffficulty--as a matter of education as much as of economics. Some consideration might also be given to the practices of the advertising industry. Is it in the public interest that enormous sums should be spent on convincing people that they should maximize their consumption of resources? Probably not, but what is government prepared to do about it? Experience of the campaign against smoking, as a public health measure, indicates that governments are prepared to devote much less effort (as measured by money) to abating the practice than the tobacco industry was in promoting it. We cannot be optimistic therefore.
It cannot be denied that these are such thorny subjects, given the way the world has developed, that it is asking a lot for any government to deal realistically with them. In many countries it has to look to the next election and is therefore bound to concentrate on short-term problems. Even in those countries where the government is assured of a long period of office, it cannot move far ahead of public opinion and the conventional philosophy. Yet any responsible politician must see beyond his own term of office and much could be done to prepare the public for a different sort of world than that which we have experienced in the last few decades without arousing political controversy. The absence of even modest action in this direction suggests that governments have been so preoccupied with epiphenomena and immediate problems that they have not yet started to look ahead, let alone develop a management plan for their national affairs and the wider international problems. It is about time they did so.
Prospects for the IMCO Conference A new convention to replace existing measures on oil pollution at sea is likely to emerge from the October conference of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization on marine pollution, according to Mr J. N. Archer, head of the Marine Division of the Department of Trade and Industry. Speaking at a symposium on marine pollution organized by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects in February, Mr Archer said that a new comprehensive agreement is likely to replace the 1954 convention with its 1969 amendments that at present limit the discharge of oil at sea. (Many countries have still to enforce the 1969 amendments which were only adopted in Britain late last year; see Marine Pollution Bulletin, 4 (2): 20, 1973.) Mr Archer also said that the new agreement will almost certainly include a much more effective requirement than in the 1954 agreement that governments should provide shore reception facilities for oily residues. The aim of the conference, he pointed out, is to 'achieve by 1975 if possible but certainly by the end of the decade, the complete elimination of the wilful and intentional pollution of the seas by oil and noxious substances other than oil and the minimization of accidental spills'. How this is to be achieved is still a matter of argument. Some governments, Mr Archer said, believed that a total ban is the only solution, but a number of others believe that if the 1969 amendments are properly enforced they will provide a sufficient solution. Under the 1969 amendments, 60 litres of oil and water mixture containing not more than 100 parts per million oil can be released per mile. Such a slick, Mr Archer said, disappears in about two hours and allows the load-on-top system, used by 80 per cent of the world's tankers, to be used.
According to Mr Archer, it is probably true to say 'that if these amendments were enforced, the problem of deliberate oil pollution from ships would be very largely solved'. A total ban on all discharges may prove prohibitively expensive, Mr Archer pointed out. A much cheaper solution such as the 1969 amendments might still produce a substantial improvement in the situation. Mr Archer also pointed out that while some 1.5 million tons of oil are discharged into the sea by ships each year, the amount reaching the seas from the land may be twice that amount, while an even larger proportion may reach the sea as air-borne pollution from such sources as oil burning power stations and motor cars. 'The total quantity discharged,' Mr Archer said, 'has been estimated to amount to some 25 million tons a year, and it is reasonable to believe that a substantial proportion of this ultimately reaches the seas'. But October's London conference is not only concerned with oil pollution. For the first time the conference will discuss 'noxious substances other than oil' internationally. The United Nations committee GESAMP (joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution) is currently identifying hundreds of potentially hazardous substances and classifying them under a number of regulations for carriage and discharge according to the danger they present. 'Wide differences of opinion as to suitable treatment are already emerging internationally, and the whole question of definition and treatment of noxious substances other than oil is likely to be a lively one at the conference.'
Russians and Americans in the Bering Sea The sea ice, sea surface and atmospheric conditions of the Bering Sea have been measured by the Academy of Sciences of the USA and USSR in joint programme. Both ships and aircraft have been used in the operation which lasted from February 15 to March 7. The experiment--one of the results of last August's US/USSR working group on satellite meteorology-is intended to obtain and exchange microwave measurements of the sea surface at varying temperatures and sea states, the salinity, thickness, roughness and age of the sea ice, and the water content of the atmosphere. Results may help produce a better understanding of weather patterns in the Bering Sea. It is also hoped that the measurements from microwave radiometers mounted on the aircraft can be compared to information from satellite borne instruments so that the value of each in meteorology can be assessed.
Pipelines in Port Phillip Bay Esso Australia are distributing a report with the pride of a new father handing out cigars. T i t l e d 'Report on the Impact of the Ethane Pipeline on the Marine Ecosystem of Port Phillip Bay', it was compiled by Jeanette Watson of the National Museum of Victoria after only eight hours of murky scuba diving. The 29 km pipeline is the first to cross Port Phillip Bay and carries ethane from the Gippsland fields via Westernport to the refinery complex at Altona, south-west of Melbourne. 51