January 2, 1996
The media have hailed it as the Year of the Internet. In fact it’s the first of many, since the globally accessible resources of the net promise to change the way business is done.
Within the much publicized explosion of the Internet’s WorldWide Web (WWW, or Web) has been a quiet, steadily growing gold mine of environmental management resources. No article on the Web, least of all a brief newspaper column, can do it all justice, of course. But with that caveat, here is a small sampling of Web sites that we have found particularly valuable.
A few logistical details: Be sure to enter the URL (Universal Resource Locator) exactly as presented here; spelling and punctuation count, and some Web servers are case sensitive, so don’t capitalize or decapitalize letters and expect the same result. (Note: while sentences may end with periods, URLs do not.) Web “browsers” don’t all handle formating the same way, so be prepared for some visual inconsistency if you’re not using Netscape, by far the most common browser and design standard. Finally, remember that the Web is a rapidly evolving resource; check favorite sites, directories and search engines often.
Sustainable Development is a vast overarching topic. Three very different views are presented at Solstice (http://solstice.crest.org), where the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) maintains one of the most thorough, and useful, sites on energy technology and policy; IISDnet (http://iisd1.iisd.ca/) where the International Institute for Sustainable Development offers resources on sustainable development, including sourcebook on strategies; Chattanooga Tennessee’s “Sustainable Development Progress” (http://www.chattanooga.net/SUSTAIN/index.html); and the UN Environment Program (UNEP) site (http://www.unep.ch/), which also offers pointers to the vast universe of United Nations Web sites.
ISO 14000 is also covered by a growing number of sites. ISO Online (http://www.iso.ch/) provided by the ISO Central Secretariat, presents information on ISO structure, technical committees, meeting calendars, catalogue, but little substance on the ISO 14000 standards. Better information on ISO 14000 drafts, developments, strategies is found at Stoller’s ISO 14000 Information site, (http://www.stoller.com/iso.htm); also, check out the ISO14000 Discussion Group (http://www.quality.org/qc/lists/iso14000.faq).
Design for Environment is well represented by the Consortium on Green Design and Manufacturing (CGDM), an industry/government/university partnership to develop linkages between manufacturing and design and their environmental effects and to integrate engineering information, management practices and government policy-making. Check out UC Berkeley entry point (http://www.me.berkeley.edu/green/cgdm.html). Other academic Green Design sites include Carnegie-Mellon Engineering’s Green Initiative (http://www.gsia.cmu.edu/research/green.html) and University of Windsor’s Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing Infobase, (http://ie.uwindsor.ca/ecdm_info.html).
Related “Clean Technologies/Clean Manufacturing” sites include UCLA’s Center for Clean Technology (http://cct.seas.ucla.edu/cct.2info.html) and the National Center for Clean Industrial and Treatment Technologies (http://www.civil.mtu.edu/organizations/cencitt/index.html) which includes demo Clean Process Advisory Software for delivering information on clean technologies and pollution prevention methodologies to product designers.
Pollution Prevention, waste minimization and recycling sites include
Battelle’s excellent directory (http://www.seattle.battelle.org/services/e&;s/moresite.htm), the Automotive Parts and Accessories Association site (http://www.apaa.org/pollut.html), which offers a report on pollution prevention initiatives by auto companies, and a well-focused directory of other P2 web sites, and Rutgers University College of Engineering (http://128.6.70.23), with a downloadable database of thousands of industrial energy and pollution prevention audits conducted by Energy Analysis and Diagnostic Centers around the US.
Also check out EnviroSense, EPA’s pollution prevention server, (http://wastenot.inel.gov:80/envirosense/) and the Solvent Alternatives Guide (SAGE) (http://clean.rti.org/) an expert system designed to provide general information on solvent and process alternatives for parts cleaning and degreasing.
Recycling Materials Exchanges provide a potentially powerful resource for matching recyclable “waste” products with those who can use them. Three services we’ve located include: http://grn.com/grn/ora.html (Global Recycling Network), http://www.earthcycle.com/g/p/earthcycle (National Materials Exchange Network)
and http://granite.sentex.net:80/recycle/ (Recycler’s World).
We’ll offer additional URL recommendations in coming weeks. Meanwhile, you can find a few of the many WWW Environmental Directories at http://www.gwu.edu/~greenu/
(National Environmental Information Resources Center), http://www.rain.org/~eis/
(Environmental Organization Directory), and http://www.lib.kth.se/enviro/envsite.htm
(Environmental Sites on the Internet).
Happy surfing!