There is a trend now to report especially those things that impact negatively on all things "green". This essentially claims that modern technology is to blame for our troubles and not man directly. Let's go back in time a bit to when many of our troubles began, back to 18th century Great Britain and the start of the Industrial Revolution when steam engines were introduced to make life easier for people.

The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in 1752 when the iron-master Abraham Darby began smelting with coal (Barrow, 1995). This period was distinguished by many technological inventions, including the spinning jenny and the steam engine. These machines and other innovations allowed the traditional trades of sewing, flour milling, brewing, and shoe making to become mechanized. The real advantage of this period was the thermodynamic conversion of heat energy into kinetic energy.

The benefits of the Industrial Revolution included an increased life span coupled with rising birth rates in the city which led to increased population growth. This rise in population, colonial settlement, and improved transportation methods, led to a global trade in resources and manufactured goods which assisted in driving the process of industrialization (Barrow, 1995). The ultimate benefit of the Industrial Revolution for the individual was a higher standard of living through higher wages. The increase in wages also meant an increase in the purchasing power of the population. This, in turn, resulted in an increased demand for consumer goods which meant that there was also an increased consumption of resources. The end result of this was an increase of airborne and waterborne pollutants from the factories (Heinke, 1989a).

Two textile factories on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, situated to bring coal to power the looms, then take the finished goods to Liverpool for shipment around the world. Steam-powered battleships of the Royal Navy also used coal to protect British interests around the world. Photo - Davcom Archives

As technology advanced, the Revolution continued and still continues today. It cannot be denied that there were benefits to industrialization, such as the higher standards of living resulting from higher wages. There is also a negative side as well, the impact that industrialization has on the environment.

The initial attitude regarding the wastes from industry and cities was that Nature can take care of it. Dumping raw wastes into rivers was a common practice for centuries. These rivers were also the sources of drinking and bath water. Epidemics of cholera and other diseases took their toll on the (ab)users of the rivers but little connection was made between waste discharge and disease. Eventually the practice of drinking water taken from rivers into which sewage was discharged changed so that safer sources of water were available to the public. Unfortunately, waste discharges into watercourses continued.

At the same time, the industry engines were also spewing out massive clouds of smoke and soot as they burned coal to generate the steam they needed to power the factories that made all the goods the public thought they needed. Just as mankind had been affected by the pollution of the water supply, so also a toll was taken due to pollution of the air supply. In 1911, 1,150 Londoners died from respiratory problems as a result of the coal smoke in the air; and in 1952, another 4,000 people died from pollution in the air (Miller, 1990). In 1956, London took steps to reduce air pollution and its deadly effects by passing the Clean Air Act.

Few people concerned themselves with the impact that industrialization was having upon the environment, "Nature can take care of itself" was the philosophy of the day. As various technologies improved, the state of the environment got worse. As man strove for better ways to make life easier, the costs to the environment were largely ignored.

By the time World War II erupted, the Industrial Revolution had entered the "Chemical Age". When Japan took over the world's supply of natural rubber, petrochemical companies turned their eyes to crude oil and the products they found they could create from it. Once this happened, a whole new type of pollution entered the environment in the form of man-made chemicals. Much of the wastes discharged into the waterways and the air had no natural place in the Earth's scheme of things because they were man-made, molecular Frankenstein monsters that would have made Mary Shelley proud. The desired compounds were no treat for the environment either because the philosophy that nature can take care of its own still prevailed.

After World War II, the petrochemical industry went into high gear. Scientists created novel and effective compounds to solve mankind's problems. These included compounds such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), paraquat, eldrin, and dieldrin, etc., to rid the world of harmful insects. These did their job quite well. Unfortunately they are also very effective in killing off other organisms as well ­ dogs, birds, fish and humans.

Besides these chemical bad guys, we also created "good" products like nylon, rayon, polyethylene (commonly seen as Saran wrap), polystyrene (Styrofoam), and all the weird and wonderful plastics that we now absolutely must have in order to survive. In order to get these absolutely essential, can't-live-without-em products, wastes are created.

In the 1960's, discharge of the wastes into the water, or burial in drums was a common practice. Now there were two new philosophies besides the original one. They were "Dilution is the solution to pollution" and "Out of sight, out of mind". These misguided ideas stemmed from the perception that water and air are everlasting, unending things ­ there is so much of it that we will never harm it; and from the belief that nature can handle anything we discard. These perceptions were proven wrong in the late 1960's and early 1970's after Rachel Carson wrote her well-known book Silent Spring that detailed the effect chemicals have had upon the environment; and also by the now infamous Love Canal tragedy.

Our throw-away society was born out of the Industrial Revolution. Once we created a means to mass-produce products, those products were discarded upon the end of their useful lives and new items were purchased. Because people felt that they could create a steady supply of products there was no need to retain worn out products or reclaim their raw materials. The throw-away society can be depicted as a straight line, starting at the raw material or resource, to the manufacturer(s), and on to the distributor, to the consumer, and finally to the landfill.

If, for example, you were to consider a steel can as it goes through this system, you can see how this works. The iron and coal needed to make the steel are removed from the ground. The iron is smelted using the coal and then rolled to form sheet steel which is sent to a manufacturer to form the can. Another manufacturer fills the can and sends it on to a distributor for sale to the consumer. The contents of the can are used and the empty can is discarded. The can returns to the ground from whence its components came but the raw materials cannot be recovered. Not only does our throw-away society discard worn out or useless items, but it also discards the raw materials used to make the product originally.

If one item were to illustrate our throw-away society and its accomplishments, most likely the item selected would be a landfill. Think about it, what other society can lay claim to an object like Mount Trashmore, an edifice to achievement if there ever was one!

There is an old adage which states that you cannot make an omelet without first breaking a few eggs. Once you have your omelet, what do you do with the shells? If the omelet was any product you could think of, like the chair in which you are sitting, the stereo, the computer, your clothes, etc., then the shells are the wastes that are associated with each product. What do we do with the waste? Most waste is landfilled, some is incinerated, and some is recycled.

Will we ever learn from the past? In the Iron and Bronze ages, broken products were refashioned into new equipment. When World War II erupted, people patriotically collected materials to aid the war effort. Tin, glass, cloth, paper, and rubber were all important in the 1940's, because there was a war going on. Today, the concept of reusing and reclaiming materials is being re-introduced. In the half century between World War II and today, we landfilled our trash as though we had an endless supply of raw materials.

Since we landfill so much waste, the landfill has become an engineered example of the philosophy "Out of site, out of mind". Landfills need to be located in areas with geological features that assist in preventing leachate from escaping. The areas best suited for landfills usually happen to have fertile soil on top of them. Once a landfill is created it can never be used for farming again. It's only use upon closure is as a park or golf course. In a landfill, each day's refuse is dumped in an area beside the previous day's refuse, it is then compacted and, at the end of the day, covered with earth to create a cell. Once the landfill is full, the whole site is covered with a thick clay cap and covered with vegetation. Approximately 1 hectare per year is required for every 25,000 people to landfill the generated solid waste (Henry, 1989a).

This article has been abridged.