Environmental Technology

Environmental technology can be defined as a technology that reduces significantly the amount of pollution released into the environment from various human activities. Sources of this pollution are often industrial activites, but it can also be emissions from human settlements or transport.
Environmental technologies contribute to reduction of this pollution or alternatively transfer retained pollution to some less harmful forms of it. Standards for individual environmental technologies are derived from the limits defined in the local/national environmental legislation (e.g. limits set for the highest allowable values of indicators for releasing wastwater into surface waters, or the highest allowable concentration of air emissions released into the atmosphere). These standards also depend on the level of knowledge and economic availability of these technologies at the local markets.
A simple example of a widely used environmental technology are wastewater treatment plants - both industrial and communal. These treatment plants retain produced pollution that would normally spread without control to the surrounding environment and would  contaminate groundwaters and surface waters with toxic substances. The process of wastewater treatment produces different types of sludges. Their amount and composition differ according to the composition of waste water and technology used. These sludges need to be processed in a way that the pollution is not transfered into another environmental media. The second product of waste water treatment is clean water complying with local environmental limits and standards.

Centre for Innovation and Development has been working with environmental technologies and their transfer for many years already, especially within the official development assistance scheme.
If you need assistance in the field of environmental technologies, please contact us at