Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022 - 29

Geosynthetics industry leaders are striving
to achieve a highly sustainable future,
but we all must do more.
by Boyd Ramsey
S
ustainability is a complex issue, but there are some
very simple and direct truths about it. The world's
population is nearly eight billion people; while
the population growth rate has slowed in recent
years, the earth's population continues to rise. There are
simply not sufficient resources to provide for the number
of people on the planet if we continue our historical
patterns of consumption. Throughout the course of
modern history, humans have taken resources from the
ground, seas and Earth's crust (lumber, oil, minerals,
animals, etc.), used what we wanted, threw away the
waste (regularly contaminating water and land) and
continued to devour our planet at an unsustainable rate.
But as the cumulative effects of this abuse rapidly
become too large to ignore, there is a growing urgency
for humankind to change our behaviors-what and
how we mine, farm and consume. This extends to waste
disposal as well: Landfilling much less, recycling and
reusing more, and probably most importantly, finding
smarter ways to manage and reduce consumption of the
raw materials and resources that we have left.
Economic systems also need to change to support
and motivate these alterations in our behaviors. Even
the vaunted capitalist system rarely assigns values that
reflect the true and inclusive cost of items: their creation,
environmental impact, duration of utility and impacts
of disposal. In the geosynthetics field, these phenomena
display themselves in abandoned mines, tailings dams,
fertilizer production sites and other sites that the
geosynthetics industry regularly works with in cleanup
and site stabilization.
The good news is that humankind is changing,
developing plans and programs for improving
sustainable behaviors (Figure 1). The United Nations
Division for Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs)
has a comprehensive set of Sustainable Development
Goals (United Nations 2022). In 2015, the UN published
EDITOR'S NOTE
Boyd Ramsey is a
geosynthetics consultant
based in Houston, Texas. He
has been a leader within the
geosynthetics, environmental
containment and waste
disposal industries for more
than 25 years and served on
the ATA (formerly IFAI) Board
of Directors from 20122016.
The following article
is excerpted from a longer
feature that was originally
published in the April/
May issue of Geosynthetics
magazine. The complete
article can be found online at
geosyntheticsmagazine.com.
The author at a geosynthetic-covered
hazardous waste site in Paducah,
Ky. Part of sustainability is keeping
humanity's waste from fouling the
earth's environment.
SpecialtyFabricsReview.com 29

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Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022

Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022 - Cover1
Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022 - Cover2
Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022 - 1
Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022 - 2
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Specialty Fabrics Review July 2022 - cover3
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