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Environmental Biotechnology - Environment consists of the sum of all the factors outside an organism. It consists of both biotic (other organisms) as well as abiotic (water, temperature, air, etc.) factors. Thus, for a given organism, other organisms constitute a component of the environment; while the organism itself becomes a factor of the environment for other organisms.

The environment considered in this chapter is from the view-point of humans and, hence, regards all other organisms as components of the environment. The factors of environment, however, discussed here are only abiotic, since all biotic factors derive their existence either directly or indirectly from the abiotic environment.

Initially, humans obtained all items of his need from nature, but with time he devised a variety of production systems to generate the various consumer products. The natural production processes generally use solar energy, are efficient in use of energy, produce materials containing mainly the elements C, N, H, 0, P and S, and all the products are biodegradable.

In contrast, human designed production processes are inefficient in energy use, as raw materials virtually all elements present on earth, and many of the products of these processes are difficult to biodegrade, while many others can not be biodegraded. In addition, these processes ordinarily generate by­products and/or effluents, which are released in the environment often with damaging consequences.

But natural production systems generally do not generate such damaging byproducts. Thus human obtains from the environment his life support systems, which include oxygen, energy, water, raw materials, and nutrients and place to live. The three abiotic components of environment, viz., air, water and soil, contribute in various ways to the fulfillment of human needs.

In turn, the various activities of humans, e.g., domestic, agricultural, manufacture, transport, war efforts, accidents, etc., generate wastes and pollutants, which contaminate air, water and soil. The awareness to pollution generating effects of human activities has increased dramatically during the past 2-3 decades.

In response humans have strived to minimise the damaging effects of their activities on the environment by developing (i) technologies to clean up the pollution generated by other technologies (such technologies are often called 'end-of-the-pipe' technologies) and/or (ii) production technologies, which are 'cleaner' and generate less pollution (these are called 'front-of-the-pipe' technologies).

Both these approaches minimise damage to the environment. However, the term environmental biotechnology is applied only to the 'end-of-the-pipe' technologies using biological agents, i.e., biotechnological approaches applied to manage environmental problems.

 

 

 
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