ABSTRACT
Environmental technology was applied more than 100 years ago to solve pollution problems. Biological treatment of wastewater has been applied although on a modest scale in Europe even before the start of the twentieth century. Before Rachel Carson’s book, The Silent Spring, it was the only tool available for the solution of pollution problems and environmental problems in general. Environmental technology is based on a technological method to reduce the pollution; it means treatment of wastewater, smoke, and solid waste. Environmental technology is best fitted to solve pollution problems from point sources, because it makes it possible to use the technological method directly on the point source, which implies that the amount of wastewater and solid waste is limited and rather concentrated. It is therefore possible to develop a technological method that is able to reduce the concentration of pollutants with a high efficiency in most cases. Environmental technology in many cases requires a relatively high investment and the operational costs are also sometimes high; although there are also many examples of relatively low operational costs. After the development of the other tools to solve the pollution problems-as presented in Chapters 12-15-it is clear that environmental technology often beneficially has to be combined with the other tools to find the most effective and cost-moderate solution, although there are also several cases where environmental technology is the only obvious method to apply. This is particularly the case for industrial pollution problems, where environmental technology even may offer possibilities to recover or recycle raw materials.
