In this blog, I attempt to discuss how social innovation and social media innovation promotes positive environmental outcomes. Social innovation is a kind of new social practice that aims to generative innovative ideas and solutions to solve social needs and problems in the current world (European Commission, 2014). Normally, social innovation involves a diverse range of initiatives and activities that are undertaken with the purpose of creating social benefits. At present, social innovation has been widely considered as a powerful and useful tool in environmental sector because it would help to address all kinds of serious environmental and social problems so as to promote the achievement of sustainable development (Piccarozzi, 2017). Based on this perspective, I personally considered that social innovation is good for both environment and society. To deepen the insights about the positive implications of social innovation, it is interesting to explore the relationship between social innovation and environmental outcome.

I consider social innovation could also promote innovative products or service to promote positive environmental outcome so as to achieve the sustainable development. For example, water pollution and scarcity has become a key environmental and social problem. According to statistics, 40% of population around the world is suffering from water scarcity, and 785 million people still cannot access to the safe drinking water and basic sanitation service (United Nations, 2019). More seriously, around 701 million people still engaged in the behaviour of open defecation (United Nations, 2019). Each year, about 289,000 children under 5 years old die from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. To address such social or environmental problem, various social innovation initiatives are undertaken. “Who Gives A Crap” is a typical social innovation solution initiated by Simon, Jehan and Danny in July 2012. Such social innovation initiative aims to provide opportunity for people to access toilets and to provide toilet papers that are made with environmentally friendly materials for reducing environmental problems such as environmental destruction and water pollution, and donates its profits to non-profit organizations that are committed to improve the access of people hygiene, water and basic sanitation. Through social innovation initiative, more and more people are able to access clean and safe drinking water and the basic sanitation. In my personal view, such social innovation initiative would helps help to advance the overall agenda of wastewater treatment and recycling at local, national and global level. For example, the social innovation initiative “Who Gives A Crap” helps to earn profits by selling toilet paper with environmentally friendly materials. The earned profit can be donated to non-profit organizations working to improve wastewater treatment in developing countries. To a large extent, such social innovation initiative could make positive contributions to address the problem of wastewater and to promote the wide access to safe drinking water and the basic sanitation. Based on this perspective, such social innovation initiative helps to promote the achievement of the sustainable development goal 6. Hence, I have found that social innovation is an effective approach to promote positive environmental outcomes and to achieve expected sustainable development goals. 

Positive environmental outcome can also be achieved through social media campaigns. For example, Billion Acts of Green Campaign is an innovative social media campaign that aims to promote positive environmental outcomes (World.edu, 2010). Such social media campaign was launched by Earth Day Network for the 2010’s Earth Day and aimed to encourage people to take actions for reducing environmental footprint (World.edu, 2010). The Billion Acts of Green campaign featured social media tools that make people to particulate in the campaigns easily. Such campaign encourage the users of social media platform such as Facebook and Twitter to pledge one “action of green” and in the meantime share the action through their social media networks (World.edu, 2010). Such social media campaign greatly increased the environmental commitments of social media users and encouraged them to make their efforts to reduce environmental footprint. By now, 2,688,209,868 acts of green are reached due to the implementation of the Billion Acts of Green Campaign (Earth Day Network, 2019). Based on this case, it is found that clever and innovative social media campaign helps to promote positive environmental outcomes. 

Based on the discussions above, I personally believe that social innovation and innovative social media campaign has positive relationship with better environmental outcomes because it helps to address various social and environmental problems effectively so as to realize sustainable development goals developed by the United Nations Development Programmed. Due to the positive benefits of social innovation and innovative social media campaign, I personally consider that national government should focus on encouraging and support social enterprises and individuals to engage in various social innovation and social media campaign in order to achieve better environmental outcome and to realize the goal of sustainable development goals. 

References

European Commission (2014).Social Innovation and the Environment.[Online] Available from:  https://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/IR10_en.pdf  [Accessed: 9 September2019].

Earth Day Network (2019). Take action: A Billion Acts of Green, [Online] Available from: https://www.earthday.org/take-action/ [Accessed: 12September2019].

Piccarozzi, M. (2017). Does Social Innovation Contribute to Sustainability? The Case of Italian Innovative Start-Ups, Sustainability, 9, pp. 1-28.  

United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goals6 [Online] Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6 [Accessed: 10 September2019].

World.edu (2010).Social media week: Top 3 environmental social media campaigns. [Online] Available from: https://world.edu/social-media-week-top-3-environmental-social-media-campaigns/ [Accessed: 12September2019].  

Hello Everyone , long time no see, this is my third bolg

Water pollution has become a serious problem that greatly influences our life. Under this condition, how to deal with water pollution has become an urgent problem in today’s society. In order to deal with the problem of the serious water pollution, wastewater treatment has always been recommended as the most effective solution (Anjum, Rasheed, & Ahmed, 2016). Wastewater treatment engineering is to apply relevant wastewater treatment facilities to turn the wastewater into clean water. In previous blogs, I have discussed wastewater treatment. In this week, I attempt to discuss another interesting topic, which is about the relationship between regulatory framework and wastewater engineering. 

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It is well known that population growth is one of key factor that results in water scarcity. It is projected that the world population will increase to 3.6 billion by 2035 (PAI, 2012). The quick population growth results in the increasing demand and consumption of the limited water resource. As a consequent, scarcity of clean water has become an increasingly serious challenge. According to the sustainable development goal 6, ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water for all people across the world is a key sustainable development goal (United Nations, 2019). To achieve such sustainable development goal, wastewater treatment and reuse is becoming essentialto securing water supply, particular the supply of safely drinking water. However, in my opinion, the current wastewater treatment does still not reach acceptable level. An interesting fact is that around 78 million people globally still cannot access safely drinking water (United Nations, 2019). Under this condition, how to ensure the wasted wastewater to reach an acceptable level is still a challenging job. To achieve this, I personally considered that the implementation of effective regulatory framework is a key because I consider that effective regulatory framework helps to promote better wastewater engineering practices. 

Historically, regulatory requirements on wastewater treatment engineering have been continuouslyheightened. For example, Australian government has implemented the South Australian Public Health (Wastewater) Regulations 2013 to strengthen the governance of wastewater treatment. This regulatory framework details the legislative requirements for wastewater systems. Before this regulatory framework is developed and implemented, operators of wastewater treatment systems often failed in complying with relevant wastewater treatment standards. Consequently, the effect of wastewater treatment is not obvious. To strengthen the governance of wastewater treatment, Australia has develop and enforced the regulatory framework “the South Australian Public Health (Wastewater) Regulations 2013”, which outlines specific legislative requirements in terms installation of wastewater system, management of wastewater, operation of wastewater system and maintenance of wastewater system. For example, this regulatory framework prescribes that the operations of wastewater systems must fully ensure that wastewater without treatment is prohibited to dispose to land or other water systems. Such regulatory framework is important to develop better wastewater engineering practice because it clearly outlines specific legal requirements that the operations of wastewater treatment systems must comply. By implementing the South Australian Public Health (Wastewater) Regulations 2013, Australia effectively prevents the disposal of untreated waste into land or rivers and promotes better wastewater engineering practices. Hence, I personally consider that having a regulatory framework is important because it helps to reduce irresponsibile waster treatment behavior of practices and to promote the better wastewater engineering practices. 

To strengthen regulatory frameworks on wastewater treatment and to treat wastewater problems effectively, I personally consider that it is of important to encourage people to share wastewater treatment ideas in order to generate smart and innovative solutions. For example, TEDx is a program of local self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Through TEDxMileHigh, people are able to share their ideas about the wastewater treatment. For example, Eleanor Allen, the CEO of a nonprofit organization called as Water For People, is committed to provide services in water, sanitation, and hygiene. On TEDxMileHigh, Eleanor Allen shared innovative ideas about how to global water and sanitation services, and shared innovation solutions to deal with wastewater based on her experience of providing global water and sanitation services. According to the Sustainable Development Goal 6 developed by United Nations Development Program, ensuring drinking water supply and sanitation is a key target of the sustainable development goal. In order to achieve such sustainable development goal, it needs to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all people across the world. To some extent, I personally considered that the TEDxMileHigh provides a good platform to develop innovative solutions to deal with wastewater problems and to promote better wastewater engineering practices. Additionally, TEDxMileHigh also can bring people around the world together to discuss how to improve and implement regulatory frameworks to regulate wastewater from different perspectives. By promoting the spread of wastewater treatment ideas, I personally believe that the wastewater treatment engineering practice can be further improved so as to address the increasingly serious wastewater problems effectively and finally realize the sustainable development goals on the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. 

Reference

Anjum, M. N., Rasheed, H. U., & Ahmed, W. (2016). Impact of Waste Water Treatment on Quality of Influent & Effluent Water, Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 2(11), pp. 844-849

Groppi, A., Garrone, P., Grilli, L., & Marzano, R. (2018). Barriers and drivers in the adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies: a comparative analysis of Italian utilities, Journal of Cleaner Production,171, pp. 69-78.

PAI (2012).Why Population Matters to water resource,[Online] Available from:  https://pai.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PAI-1293-WATER-4PG.pdf [Accessed: 1 September2019].

United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goals[Online] Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300 [Accessed: 1 September2019].

Water is the indispensable natural resource for all organisms on the earth. According to Asiwal et al. (2016), the availability of clean drinking water directly determines the life quality of people. Nevertheless, along with the progress of industrialization and water pollution, water scarcity at global scope is increasingly serious. Today, large amount of domestic and industrial wastewater are discharged to the ocean and rivers, resulting in more serious water pollution. According to statistics, over 80% of wastewater generated from human activities is directly pumped into sea or rivers without removing the pollutants from the wastewater (United Nations, 2019). In order to address the problem of wastewater, the construction of wastewater infrastructure has been considered as a key solution to wastewater (Morris, 2017). The Sustainable Development Goal 9 mainly focuses on addressing three key aspects of sustainable development, which are the establishment of infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, and innovation respectively (Mugagga & Nabaasa, 2016). The building of infrastructure offers the foundational physical facilities that are essential to society and business. Wastewater infrastructure is essential facilities used to treat wastewater. 

Nevertheless, there are various issues currently facing wastewater infrastructure. Aging infrastructure is an important issue currently facing wastewater infrastructure. According to Selvakumar et al. (2015), aging infrastructure is a common issue that has been widely found among wastewater systems worldwide. Generally, the majority of wastewater infrastructure was established for many years, and even past the useful life. For example, the United States has around 16,000 wastewater systems (Selvakumar et al.,2015).However, most components of the wastewater infrastructure in the United States are more than 100 years old (Selvakumar et al., 2015). To some extent, the aging wastewater infrastructure not only limits the efficacy of wastewater treatment, but also poses potential health and safety risks to the public. In addition, the aging wastewater infrastructure cannot well meet the growing demands for wastewater treatment in the future (Selvakumar et al., 2015). The Sustainable Development Goal 9 places the emphasis on building resilient infrastructure, facilitating sustainable industrialization and fostering innovations for realizing sustainable development. Under this condition, public utilities are required to make significant investment in rehabilitating and replacing the aging wastewater infrastructure and to faster innovation for managing wastewater infrastructure systems in order to achieve sustainable supply of clean drinking waters so as to meeting the growing demand for water across the world.

In order to address the aging problem currently facing wastewater infrastructure,smart solutions needs to be taken. One of solutions to address the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure is to rehabilitate and replace the aging wastewater infrastructure (American Water, 2013). Rehabilitation is used to fix the broken components of wastewater infrastructure for ensuring the normal operations of the wastewater infrastructure (American Water, 2013). When adopting rehabilitation as the solutions to the aging wastewater infrastructure,acoustic monitoring technologies are adopted to detect where wastewater infrastructure needs to be fixed or improved (American Water, 2013). The replacement solution is used when the aging wastewater infrastructure cannot be rehabilitated. This solution requires local governments and utilities to make the investment in building new and infrastructure. The Sustainable Development Goal 9 suggested that sustainable development can be achieved by building resilient infrastructure (United Nations, 2019). By replacing or rebuilding the aging wastewater infrastructure, it would help to ensure efficacy of wastewater treatment. However, such solution is most costly and complex because it needs to install new wastewater infrastructure for turn the wastewater into clean water. Another smart solution to address the aging wastewater infrastructure is to adopt innovative technologies to manage the wastewater infrastructure (Selvakumar et al., 2015). The Sustainable Development Goal 9 claims that sustainable development can be realized by fostering innovation (United Nations, 2019). Under this condition, it needs to strengthen innovation in various aspects for addressing the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure.  In order to tackle the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure, governments and utilities needs to increase the expenditures on research and development in order to develop renewal technologies to detect and evaluate the performance and wastewater infrastructure annually and to strengthen the useful life of wastewater infrastructure. For example, utilities could uses advanced nondestructive electromagnetic technology to evaluate the baseline structural condition of wastewater infrastructure and then take suitable actions to prevent the aging problem of wastewater infrastructure based on the detection results (Terrero et al., 2013). Besides that, in order to tackle the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure, it would also promote innovation in terms of anti-aging materials in order to increase the anti-aging performance of wastewater infrastructure. By using new and innovative material in wastewater infrastructure, it is believed that the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure can be well presented and addressed. Finally, continuous innovation in term of waste recycling technology installed in wastewater infrastructure is also needed in order to meet the increasing demand for wastewater treatment.

References 

American Water (2013). Challenges in the water industry: Infrastructure and its role in water supply,[Online] Available from:  https://pr.amwater.com/static-files/7be9385b-1a4a-4a21-b161-6ea22c50332b[Accessed: 19 August 2019].

Asiwal, R. S., Sar, S. K., Singh, S., & Sahu, M. (2016). Wastewater Treatment by Effluent Treatment Plants, SSRG International Journal of Civil Engineering,3(12), pp. 29-35.

Morris, J. C. (2017). Planning for Water Infrastructure: Challenges and Opportunities, Public Works Management & Policy,22(1), pp. 24-30.

Mugagga, F., & Nabaasa, B. B. (2016). The centrality of water resources to the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): A review of potentials and constraints on the African continent, International Soil and Water Conservation Research,4(3), pp. 215-223.

Selvakumar, A., Matthews, J. C., Condit, W., & Sterling, R. (2015). Innovative research program on the renewal of aging water infrastructure systems, Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology,64(2), pp. 117-129.

Terrero, P., Arrebola, V. E., Aguiar, L., lovett, R. J., & Coates, R. A. (2013). Comprehensive renewal program addresses aging water and sewer infrastructure, Journal AWWA,105(6), pp. 72-77

United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goal 6. [Online] Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6 [Accessed: 19 August 2019].

United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goal 9.[Online] Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg9[Accessed: 19 August 2019].

Water pollution has always been a serious issue that produces negative impact on human health and threats the achievement of sustainable development (Halder & Islam, 2015). To some extent, wastewater is a key cause of water pollution. Under this condition, it is necessary to carry out effective wastewater treatment process to improve the quality of water (Anjum, Rasheed, & Ahmed, 2016). Nevertheless, the treatment of wastewater is a quite complex project because wastewater generally contains various constituents such as chemical constituents, physical constituents, and biological constituents (Abdalla & Hammam, 2014). To some extent, the complexity of wastewater constitutes has pose serious challenges to the wastewater treatment. Under this condition, it needs to adopt suitable wastewater treatment solutions to treat wastewater in an effective way.

Clean drinking water is indispensable resource for all life on the earth. However, the development of industrialization has resulted serious water pollution and the shortage of clean drinking water. In this case, how to access the clean drinking water has become a challenge faced by countries across the world. According to the Sustainable Development Goals, clean water and sanitation is one of key sustainable development goals (Weststrate et al., 2019). Although the proportion of global population who access to safely drinking water services increased from 61% in 2000 to 71% in 2105, it needs to be noticed that around 785 million people at global scope still cannot access to the basic drinking water service (United Nations, 2019). Nevertheless, wastewater pollution is increasingly serious worldwide, which pose serious challenges to the achievement of the sustainable development goal in terms of Clean Water and Sanitation (Weststrate et al., 2019). For this, wastewater treatment has become an urgent problem that needs to be addressed well in order to achieve the sustainable development goal on clean water and sanitation. 

To date, there are different wastewater treatment approaches that have been used to deal with the increasingly serious wastewater problem. Chemical wastewater treatment has been recommended as one of effective solutions to deal with the problem of wastewater (Sahu & Chaudhari, 2013). Normally, wastewater generally contains various chemical constituents such as perfluorooctanoic acid, acids compounds, dichloroethane, chemical drugs, and chemical dyes and so on. The existence of various toxic chemical materials in wastewater has caused a series of environmental and health issues such as the breed of pathogenic microorganism that are detrimental to human health and the shortage of clean drinking water. In this case, the adoption of chemical wastewater treatment has become one of effective solutions to treat the wastewater problem. According to Asiwal et al. (2016), the principle of chemical wastewater treatment is to use chemical additions to change the quality of water from wastewater to clean water. Through chemical wastewater treatment methods, it can eliminate the chemical constituents present on wastewater for addressing wastewater issue.  

The most common chemical wastewater treatment methods mainly include chemical coagulation, pH control, chemical precipitation, adsorption and oxidation (Asiwal et al., 2016). For example, Chemical coagulation is a wastewater treatment process that aims to separate suspended solids portion and precipitate soluble heavy metals from the waster for changing the quality of waster (Sahu & Chaudhari, 2013). Figure 1 shows the Chemical coagulation process of wastewater. The first step is to add chemical additions to wastewater. In the second step, the chemical additions that are added to the wastewater are mixed quickly to make the distribution of the chemical additions throughout the wastewater. In the third step, chemical constituents present on wastewater are flocculated to become insoluble solid, which are further precipitated in the fourth step. In the final step, the coagulated chemical constituents are removed from the wastewater to change the quality of the water. 

Through such chemical wastewater treatment solutions, it can effectively turn the wastewater into clean water. To a large extent, the adoption of chemical wastewater treatment methods to threat wastewater helps to meet the sustainable development goal on water and sanitation. According to the sustainable development goals framework, the sustainable development goal 6 aims to achieve some eight targets (Winkler et al., 2017). The first three targets of the sustainable development goal 6 are relevant to drinking water supply and sanitation. The target 6.1 of the sustainable development goal 6 is to ensure the equitable and universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, the target 6.2 of the sustainable development goal 6 is to achieve the access to equitable and adequate sanitation and hygiene for all, and the target 6.3 of the sustainable development goal 6 is to improve the quality of water by reducing pollutants, eliminating hazardous chemicals and materials, and increasing recycling use of safe water (United Nations, 2019). Chemical wastewater treatment solutions are used to remove hazardous chemicals and materials from wastewater. By using chemical wastewater treatment solutions, it would help to eliminate hazardous chemicals and materials in the wastewater and therefore ensure the access of clean and safe drinking water (Winkler et al., 2017). Hence, Chemical wastewater treatment processes are effective treatment solutions to wastewater and helps to achieve the sustainable development goal 6. 

References

Abdalla, K. Z., & Hammam, G. (2014). Correlation between Biochemical Oxygen Demand and Chemical Oxygen Demand for Various Wastewater Treatment Plants in Egypt to Obtain the Biodegradability Indices, International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research, 13(1), pp. 42-48.

Anjum, M. N., Rasheed, H. U., & Ahmed, W. (2016). Impact of Waste Water Treatment on Quality of Influent & Effluent Water,Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research,2(11), pp. 844-849

Asiwal, R. S., Sar, S. K., Singh, S., & Sahu, M. (2016). Wastewater Treatment by Effluent Treatment Plants, SSRG International Journal of Civil Engineering,3(12), pp. 29-35.

Halder, J. N., & Islam, M. N. (2015). Water Pollution and its Impact on the Human Health. Journal of Environment Pollution and Human,2(1), pp. 36-46.

Sahu, O. P., & Chaudhari, P. K. (2013). Review on Chemical treatment of Industrial Waste Water. Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management, 17(2), pp. 241-257.

United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goal 6. Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6 [Accessed: 13 August 2019].

Winkler, M. S, Jackson, D, Sutherland, D, Payden, D. S., Lim, J. M. U, Srikantaiah, V, Fuhrimann, S, & Medlicott. K (2017). Sanitation safety planning as a tool for achieving safely managed sanitation systems and safe use of wastewater, WHO South-East Asia Journal of Public Health,6(2), pp. 34-40.

Weststrate, J., DijkstraJasper, G., Eshuis, J., Gianoli, A., & Rusca, M. (2019). The Sustainable Development Goal on Water and Sanitation: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals. Social Indicators Research,143(2), pp. 795-810.