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Green Business Glossary

A

  • Acid Mine Drainage: Drainage of water from areas that have been mined for coal or other mineral ores. The water has a low pH because of its contact with sulfur-bearing material and is harmful to aquatic organisms.
  • Air Pollution Control Device: Mechanism or equipment that cleans emissions generated by a source (e.g., an incinerator, industrial smokestack, or automobile exhaust system) by removing pollutants that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere.
  • Alternative Compliance: A policy that allows facilities to choose among methods for achieving emission reduction or risk reduction instead of command and control regulations that specify standards and how to meet them. Use of a theoretical emissions bubble over a facility to cap the amount of pollution emitted while allowing the company to choose where and how (within the facility) it complies.
  • Alternative Fuels: Substitutes for traditional liquid, oil-derived motor vehicle fuels like gasoline and diesel. Includes mixtures of alcohol-based fuels with gasoline, methanol, ethanol, compressed natural gas, and others.
  • Antarctic “Ozone Hole”: Refers to the seasonal depletion of ozone in the upper atmosphere above a large area of Antarctica.
  • Anti-Degradation Clause: Part of federal air quality and water quality requirements prohibiting deterioration where pollution levels are above the legal limit.
  • Asbestos: A mineral fiber that can pollute air or water and cause cancer or asbestosis when inhaled. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned or severely restricted its use in manufacturing and construction.

B

  • Basalt: Consistent year-round energy use of a facility; also refers to the minimum amount of electricity supplied continually to a facility.
  • BEN: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's computer model for analyzing a violator's economic gain from not complying with the law.
  • Beryllium: A metal hazardous to human health when inhaled as an airborne pollutant. It is discharged by machine shops, ceramic and propellant plants, and foundries.
  • Biostabilizer: A machine that converts solid waste into compost by grinding and aeration.
  • Building-Related Illness: Diagnosable illness whose cause and symptoms can be directly attributed to a specific pollutant source within a building.
  • By-Product: Material, other than the principal product, generated as a consequence of an industrial process or as a breakdown product in a living system.

C

  • Carbon Tetrachloride (CC14): Compound consisting of one carbon atom and four chlorine atoms, once widely used as a industrial raw material, as a solvent, and in the production of chlorofluorocarbons. Use as a solvent ended when it was discovered to be carcinogenic.
  • Categorical Pretreatment Standard: A technology-based effluent limitation for an industrial facility discharging into a municipal sewer system. Analogous in stringency to best availability technology for direct dischargers.
  • Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs): A family of inert, nontoxic, and easily liquefied chemicals used in refrigeration, air conditioning, packaging, and insulation, or as solvents and aerosol propellants. Because CFCs are not destroyed in the lower atmosphere, they drift into the upper atmosphere, where their chlorine components destroy ozone.
  • Class 1 Substance: One of several groups of chemicals with an ozone depletion potential of 0.2 or higher, including CFCs, halons, carbon tetrachloride, and methyl chloroform (listed in the Clean Air Act), as well as hydrobromofluorocarbons and ethyl bromide.
  • Coke Oven: An industrial process that converts coal into coke, one of the basic materials used in blast furnaces for the conversion of iron ore into iron.
  • Commercial Waste: All solid waste emanating from business establishments such as stores, markets, office buildings, restaurants, shopping centers, and theaters.
  • Compliance Schedule: A negotiated agreement between a pollution source and a government agency that specifies dates and procedures by which a source will reduce emissions and, thereby, comply with a regulation.
  • Cooling Tower: A structure that helps remove heat from water used as a coolant; for example, in electric power–generating plants.

D

  • Diazinon: An insecticide. In 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned its use on open areas such as sod farms and golf courses because it posed a danger to migratory birds. The ban did not apply to agricultural, home lawn, or commercial establishment uses.
  • Dioxin: Any of a family of compounds known chemically as dibenzo-p-dioxins. Concern about them arises from their potential toxicity as contaminants in commercial products. Tests on laboratory animals indicate that they are one of the more toxic anthropogenic (man-made) compounds.
  • Direct Discharger: A municipal or industrial facility that introduces pollution through a defined conveyance or system such as outlet pipes; a point source.
  • Downstream Processors: Industries dependent on crop production (e.g., canneries and food processors).

E

  • Emission: Pollution discharged into the atmosphere from smokestacks, other vents, and surface areas of commercial or industrial facilities; from residential chimneys; and from motor vehicle, locomotive, or aircraft exhausts.
  • Environmental Audit: An independent assessment of the current status of a party's compliance with applicable environmental requirements or of a party's environmental compliance policies, practices, and controls.
  • Ethylene Dibromide (EDB): A chemical used as an agricultural fumigant and in certain industrial processes. Extremely toxic and found to be a carcinogen in laboratory animals, EDB has been banned for most agricultural uses in the United States.

F

  • Fluorocarbons (FCs): Any of a number of organic compounds analogous to hydrocarbons in which one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine. Once used in the United States as a propellant for domestic aerosols, FCs are now found mainly in coolants and some industrial processes. FCs containing chlorine are called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). They are believed to be modifying the ozone layer in the stratosphere, thereby allowing more harmful solar radiation to reach the Earth's surface.

H

  • Hammer Mill: A high-speed machine that uses hammers and cutters to crush, grind, chip, or shred solid waste.
  • Hazard Communication Standard: An Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation that requires chemical manufacturers, suppliers, and importers to assess the hazards of the chemicals that they make, supply, or import, and to inform employers, customers, and workers of these hazards through material safety data sheet information.

I

  • Indirect Discharge: Introduction of pollutants from a nondomestic source into a publicly owned waste-treatment system. Indirect dischargers can be commercial or industrial facilities whose wastes enter local sewers.
  • Industrial Pollution Prevention: Combination of industrial source reduction and toxic chemical use substitution.
  • Industrial Waste: Unwanted materials from an industrial operation; may be liquid, sludge, solid, or hazardous waste.

L

  • List: Shorthand term for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency list of violating facilities or firms debarred from obtaining government contracts because they violated certain sections of the Clean Air or Clean Water Acts. The list is maintained by the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Monitoring.

M

  • Maximum Available Control Technology (MACT): The emission standard for sources of air pollution requiring the maximum reduction of hazardous emissions, taking cost and feasibility into account. Under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the MACT must not be less than the average emission level achieved by controls on the best-performing 12 percent of existing sources, by category of industrial and utility sources.

N

  • Netting: A concept in which all emissions sources in the same area that are owned or controlled by a single company are treated as one large source, thereby allowing flexibility in controlling individual sources to meet a single emissions standard.
  • Nonaqueous Phase Liquid (NAPL): Contaminants that remain undiluted as the original bulk liquid in the subsurface; for example, spilled oil.
  • Nuclear Reactors and Support Facilities: Uranium mills, commercial power reactors, fuel reprocessing plants, and uranium enrichment facilities.

O

  • Oil Spill: An accidental or intentional discharge of oil that reaches bodies of water. Oil spills can be controlled by chemical dispersion, combustion, mechanical containment, and/or adsorption. Spills from tanks and pipelines can also occur away from water bodies, contaminating the soil, getting into sewer systems, and threatening underground water sources.

P

  • Performance Standards: 1. Regulatory requirements limiting the concentrations of designated organic compounds, particulate matter, and hydrogen chloride in emissions from incinerators. 2. Operating standards established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for various permitted pollution control systems, asbestos inspections, and various program operations and maintenance requirements.
  • Plutonium: A radioactive metallic element chemically similar to uranium.
  • Point Source: A stationary location or fixed facility from which pollutants are discharged; any single identifiable source of pollution (e.g., pipe, ditch, ship, ore pit, factory smokestack).
  • Polychlorinated Biphenyls: A group of toxic, persistent chemicals used in electrical transformers and capacitors for insulating purposes and in gas pipeline systems as lubricant. The sale and new use of these chemicals, also known as PCBs, were banned by law in 1979.

Q

  • Quality Assurance/Quality Control: A system of procedures, checks, audits, and corrective actions to ensure that all U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research design and performance, environmental monitoring and sampling, and other technical and reporting activities are of the highest achievable quality.

R

  • Registration: Formal listing with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of a new pesticide before it can be sold or distributed. Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for registration (premarket licensing) of pesticides on the basis of data demonstrating no unreasonable adverse effects on human health or the environment when applied according to approved label directions.
  • Rubbish: Solid waste, excluding food waste and ashes, from homes, institutions, and workplaces.

S

  • Scrap: Materials discarded from manufacturing operations that may be suitable for reprocessing.
  • Secondary Materials: Materials that have been manufactured and used at least once and are to be used again.
  • Sewage: The waste and wastewater produced by residential and commercial sources and discharged into sewers.
  • Sewer: A channel or conduit that carries wastewater and stormwater runoff from the source to a treatment plant or receiving stream. “Sanitary” sewers carry household, industrial, and commercial waste. “Storm” sewers carry runoff from rain or snow. “Combined” sewers handle both.
  • Sick Building Syndrome: Building whose occupants experience acute health and/or comfort effects that appear to be linked to time spent therein, but in which no specific illness or cause can be identified. Complaints may be localized in a particular room or zone, or may spread throughout the building.
  • Strip Mining: A process that uses machines to scrape soil or rock away from mineral deposits just under the Earth's surface.
  • Suspension: Suspending the use of a pesticide when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deems it necessary to prevent an imminent hazard resulting from its continued use. An emergency suspension takes effect immediately; under an ordinary suspension a registrant can request a hearing before the suspension goes into effect. Such a hearing process might take six months.

T

  • Technology-Based Standards: Industry-specific effluent limitations applicable to direct and indirect sources that are developed on a category-by-category basis using statutory factors, not including water-quality effects.

V

  • Variance: Government permission for a delay or exception in the application of a given law, ordinance, or regulation.

W

  • Waste: 1. Unwanted materials left over from a manufacturing process. 2. Refuse from places of human or animal habitation.
  • Waste Minimization: Measures or techniques that reduce the amount of wastes generated during industrial production processes; term is also applied to recycling and other efforts to reduce the amount of waste going into the waste stream.
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov/OCEPAterms)
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