Ways To Limit Aviation Impact On The Environment
The three ways to limit aviation impact on the environment include operational changes, technological changes, and policy and regulation.
Operational changes: These include all the decisions made concerning both ground and air-based operations of aircraft encompassing their design, manufacture, design and maintenance of buildings, and maintenance and use of ground-based infrastructure. Most often, critical operational changes are focused on adjusting aircraft routes, flight patterns, and tactics meant to minimise time aircraft spend in the air, delays, and exposure of aviation stakeholders to industry emissions, pollutants and other environmental contaminants (Young & Wells, 2019). An example of effective operational change is the enhancing of ATC/ATM and flight procedures that decrease delays, the time aircraft spend airborne, and re-route aircraft to places with little human settlement to reduce noise population.
Technological changes: For a long time, technological changes have been successful in reducing noise and engine emissions in aircraft. Technological changes in the aviation industry have dramatically improved over the years (Grampella et al., 2017). A good example of key technological changes is the improvement of the engine and airframe technology that has substantially increased fuel efficiency and reduced engine noise emissions. However, the downside to technological changes is that they require investments from stakeholders, plus a willingness to approve and utilise new technologies. This implies that even if a given technology is widely available, its ability to create significant change is limited by aviation stakeholders’ willingness to uptake and use it.
Policy and regulation: These are the most effective way to mitigate aviation’s environmental impacts since they have wide-reaching effects and are usually compulsive. Unlike technological changes and operational changes, the effectiveness of policy and regulation is not reliant on stakeholders’ willingness to implement them. Policy and regulatory changes occur at local, regional, national, and international levels. For the aviation industry, major policy and regulations are at the national and international levels, although they also aid in directing the policy scope and content at the lower levels. Additionally, policy and regulations help shape, direct and increase the uptake of technological and operational processes across all levels. This can be through initiatives like an investment in infrastructure programs, support for technology investments, restricting or minimising certain kinds of technology and operations, and imposing minimum emission levels besides other environmental standards. Examples of policy and regulatory processes include regulating land use regarding airports and related infrastructure, emissions trading systems, and enhancing alternative and renewable energy policies.
The main sources of noise pollution at airports are noise emissions due to aircrafts’ take-offs and landings especially when flight paths pass near or over population centres. Noise emissions from aircraft are measured using ICAO’s series of standard measures that include the Sound Exposure Level (noise single event such as a plane flying overhead), the Equivalent Sound Level (average acoustic energy over a given period taking into account the multiple noise events’ cumulative effect), and the Day-Night Average Sound Level (expresses one’s exposure to sound over 24 hours). Noise pollution in airports has been managed through improvements in engine and airframe technology, and operational changes to aircraft approach, flight paths, and take-off.
The main sources of water pollution are aircrafts anti and de-icing activities, firefighting operations, pest, weed, and plant control, fuel and oil spills and storage faults, construction and maintenance, and aircraft washing. Water pollution is measured in terms of water quality of the local groundwater and contamination of waste or stormwater systems. Water pollution in and around airports can be managed by capturing surface water, treating and utilising it as “grey water” or discharging it into a nearby sea (Baxter et al., 2019). Secondly, airports should utilise the standard “reduce, reuse, and recycle strategies” in any of their sustainability efforts. Lastly, wastewater from airports can be treated to reduce heavy metals, sedimentation substances, and chlorinated hydrocarbons contamination before being discharged into the sewage system.