The Strategy For Teaching EIA (Environmental Impact Assessments)

Environmental impact assessments (EIA) are a valuable tool used by government agencies to determine the effects of various projects such as mining and recycling using quantifiable tools. Environmental impacts are not the only impacts that are important for both policy makers and other will be discussed. The cultural, economic, and economic impacts will also be discussed in class and briefly discussed in the remainder of this document.

The strategy for teaching EIA is to encourage students to conduct readings before class begins. The 4 documents discuss environmental law are crucial to understanding admistrative process involved with EIA. The first lecture leads into the second lecture and a in-class activity is crucial to the second lecture. The material could be considered quite dry, the matching exercise is one strategy to increase student involvement as well as give students an opportunity to discuss the concepts with other students. Also, this is important opportunity to demonstrate oral communication skills relevant to the topic.

Next, after the topic has been read about, discussed and lectured about, the students are required to take an assessment. The way that the assessment is structured is that the questions are at the lower levels of Bloom’s wheel. This is intended to measure a certain level of involved basic knowledge of the material and process. However, the writing homework, which is due a week after the assessment or quiz is worth far more points. The beginning of the writing assignment uses words like provide, indicate, and identify and the end of the assignment asks question using assess, critique, and justify. Reading, lecture notes, in-class activities and assessment leading the writing assignment.

The goal is to move from move to lower level intellectual understanding of EIA to higher level understanding of EIA based on the requirements of the assignment. Note only were written and communicate skills demonstrated by EIA, but the student had to apply a framework of EIA to a project of their own choosing and evaluate specifics of that project. As a result, the student will have a deep level of understanding based on the multiple levels of discussion on the topic. The remainder of this document provides a form of written lecture notes for the incoming student.

Recycling is the process of collecting, sorting, separating and purifying recyclable materials and while minimize what would have previously been called waste and processing it into new materials. Recycling includes various metals and alloys as well as some plastics, glasses, woods, paper and e-scrap from TV, cellphones and computer. Some of the valuable metals in these products include include, copper, aluminum gold, silver, platinum and steel. However, these products contain harmful products such as mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and lead. These toxics can negatively impact the air, soil and water can lead to environmental and health problems.

Environmental impact assessments (EIA) are a valuable tool used by government agencies to determine the effects of various projects such as mining and recycling using quantifiable tools. Environmental impacts are not the only impacts that are important for both policy makers and other will be discussed. The cultural, economic, and economic impacts will also be discussed in class and briefly discussed in the remainder of this document.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulates any industrial operation that generate emission. This law requires government agencies to conduct environmental impacts for a mining, recycling or oil recovering operation. NEPA requires government agencies to determine the impacts of various operations. The four impacts of recycling of materials and devices that students learn in this class are environmental.

Environmental Impact

By reducing the amount of used energy by industry, recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Most of the energy used in industrial processes and in transportation is produced by burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline, diesel, coal and other carbon associated sources. A new study shows that even 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature by carbon dioxide or other green house gasses (e.g., methane) will cause thousands of deaths and respiratory illnesses in the U.S.

To minimize these unwanted emissions and slow global warming, recycling rates need to be increased worldwide. The value of recycling is that is minimizes solid, liquid and gaseous waste. Furthermore, it leads to a better management of our natural resources. Land is affect contaminated by lead, mercury and other unwanted heavy metals (zinc, tin, cobalt, chromium and cadmium) and their compounds, as well as biologic and nuclear waste materials poses significant health risks to large populations in the world. This is because the contaminated soils will eventually contaminate the agricultural products and other feedstock, and hence poison human and animals in the long term. Current methods used to lowerthe soil contaminations are too expensive and time consuming for large-scale applications. Thus, it is highly recommended to recycle all the materials before sending to landfills and other collection areas. After those unwanted materials interact with the ground, it will take longer time to clean completely.

Recycling decrease air pollution, as well. Suspended particles in air have a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets. The big particles are in the range of 2.5 to 10 µm, whereas the small particles are below 2.5 µm. Particulate pollution consists mainly of a number of components, including acids (nitrates and sulfates), organic chemicals, metals, and soils or dust particles. The largest natural sources of particles are wind-blown dust, volcanoes and forest fires, while the largest human sources of particles are combustion sources, mainly coming from the burning of fossil fuels, internal combustion engines in transportation vehicles, and other coal and natural gas powered stations

In addition to greenhouse gas emission and soil and air contaminations, drinking water supplies, such as rivers, lakes and underground water can be contaminated by various sources, which is one of the biggest threats to human being now. Instead of obtaining raw materials by mining operations, recycling can eliminate the pollutions associated with material extraction, refining and processing. Mining activities and other manufacturing operations can pollute water resources with toxic materials (e.g., highly acidic and basic solutions, polymers, surfactants, solvents and electrolytes). Also, carbon, sulfur and nitrogen gases can interact with water droplets in air of the atmosphere and return as acid rain (e.g., sulfuric acid, carbonic acid and nitric acid), which directly affect the vegetation, human and animals, as well as increase the corrosion and degradation rates of metals and alloys, polymers, composites and woods. This is part of atmospheric corrosion and degradation, which can completely change the properties of materials and destroy them in the long term.