In practice, sustainable business often focuses on visible aspects, such as waste reduction, recycling and energy efficiency. But an equally important factor, are abiotic factors. These are the non-living environmental factors that affect the environment and business operations, such as soil quality, water use and air quality.
What does this mean specifically for your organization? How do abiotic factors affect day-to-day operations? And how can you save costs and comply with legislation by focusing on abiotic factors? You can read about it in this blog.
What are abiotic factors?
Abiotic factors are the non-living components of an environment that affect plants, animals and other organisms. These include temperature, water, sunlight and soil type. They determine whether and how organisms can survive and grow in an area. Sectors such as industry, agriculture, construction and transportation depend on these factors. But why, really?
Here are some examples:
- Soil quality: Soil is an important resource for sectors such as agriculture, construction and industry. Healthy soil is necessary for crops to grow, buildings to be solidly founded and for raw materials to be available.
- Water use and pollution: Water is indispensable for most business processes, such as refrigeration, cleaning and manufacturing. Sectors such as the food and chemical industries use large amounts of water. In the Netherlands and Belgium, water shortages are less frequent, but in periods of drought, water shortages can cause production processes to shut down.
- Air quality: This directly affects both the environment and the health of workers and local residents. Factories and vehicles emit substances such as CO2 and nitrogen oxides. Stricter emission standards require companies to reduce their emissions.
- Climate factors: Changing weather patterns are having an increasing impact on businesses. Extreme weather such as heat waves, drought, rising sea levels and storms can disrupt production and agriculture. In the construction industry, extreme weather events can cause delays as construction materials are less usable or logistics processes jam. In addition, transportation companies can be inconvenienced, delaying deliveries and increasing costs.
Why are abiotic factors important to businesses?
Abiotic factors directly affect business operations. They determine the availability of resources, influence the efficiency of production processes and play a role in complying with environmental laws. You can read about exactly what this means below.
- Compliance with legislation
Abiotic factors play a role in sustainability reporting and legislation such as the CSRD (Corporate Sustainabiltity Reporting Directive). This requires companies to report environmental impacts, explicitly including water use, pollutant emissions and land use in the reporting requirements. In addition, ISO 14001 certification focuses on environmental management, requiring companies to demonstrate how they deal with air quality, water management and resource use.
- Optimization of business operations
Companies that understand abiotic factors can take more targeted steps toward sustainable business and reduce the ecological impact of business operations. For example, by investing in energy-efficient filter systems, such as air cleaning systems in the chemical and metal processing industries. This helps to reduce harmful emissions during the production and processing process. This improves air quality, which not only contributes to a healthier work environment, but also helps comply with stricter laws and regulations.
- Sustainability and resource use.
Reduced air and water pollution and the more careful use of raw materials contribute to the circular economy. A concrete example of this is the reuse of process water. In the food industry, a lot of water is released during production processes, such as cleaning. This water, instead of being discharged, can be filtered and reused for certain applications within the same production process. This reduces the need for fresh water, which reduces the pressure on natural resources such as groundwater. This ensures that raw materials remain in circulation longer, which is an important principle within the circular economy.
In addition, it also leads to cost savings. Because less wastewater needs to be discharged, discharge costs decrease.
Challenges in managing abiotic factors
While companies benefit from improving their impact on abiotic factors, there are also a number of challenges to consider.
- Lack of insight: Many companies do not have a sufficient overview of their impact on abiotic factors. This is because this data is scattered across different departments, or because it is not systematically tracked. Without aggregated data, it is difficult to make targeted improvements.
- Complex data collection: Measuring and analyzing abiotic factors is technical and time-consuming. It requires specialized measuring equipment and expertise to obtain and interpret reliable data. An example is monitoring water quality in industrial processes. This is done with sensors that continuously record data on pH values, temperature and contamination. Analyzing this data and adjusting processes to meet environmental standards can be complex and labor-intensive.
- High implementation costs: Investing in sustainability measures such as water treatment plants or air purification systems can seem costly. This is especially true for companies with older infrastructure, where modifications can be complex and invasive, due to the need to modify or replace existing processes. Subsidies and financial schemes such as the Energy Investment Allowance(EIA) or the Environmental Investment Allowance(MIA) can help reduce costs.
- Cooperation within the chain: Reducing abiotic impacts requires transparency and cooperation with suppliers and waste processors. Without joint efforts, improvements remain limited because much of the ecological impact is often further down the chain. An example is packaging material: if a company switches to recyclable packaging, but the waste processor cannot separate or process it correctly, the impact remains minimal.
Milgro and the raw materials transition
The availability and quality of raw materials are related to factors such as soil quality, water management and air pollution. By carefully managing these resources, for example by using recycled materials and renewable raw materials, companies can reduce their dependence on primary raw materials. This contributes directly to the resource transition, where materials are used as efficiently and circularly as possible.
From waste management to a circular economy
Waste and abiotic factors directly affect each other. Industrial waste, if not handled correctly, can lead to pollution of soil, air and water. Consider discharges of unfiltered process water or emissions of harmful substances during production. At the same time, abiotic factors such as temperature and precipitation influence how quickly waste materials break down or spread in the environment, for example through evaporation or runoff from rainfall. This has implications for businesses: contamination of soil and water can lead to stricter regulations, restrictions on the use of natural resources and rising costs for water and waste management.
There are several ways companies can optimize their waste management to reduce the negative impact on abiotic factors. A concrete example is the food industry, where a lot of process water is released. Instead of disposing of this directly, the water can be filtered and reused, requiring less fresh water and reducing the pressure on groundwater resources.
How does this contribute to circularity?
By understanding waste streams and improving processes, organizations can prevent waste, reduce costs and comply with laws and regulations. Even if all regulations are followed, there often remains some environmental impact--for example, through minor discharges, emissions or loss of materials.
Do you also want to reduce the impact of abiotic factors through more efficient waste management and sustainable resource use?
Schedule a no-obligation introduction with Milgro and discover what we can do for your organization.
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