Chapter Summary and Analysis Essay: Sustainable Practices in Land Transportation

In this chapter, the authors have briefly described some of the sustainable practices in land transportation and how they effectively and efficiently protect the environment and meet the socio-economic inland transportation needs of populations. The chapter also outlines the role that departments of transportation in different states within the United States play in developing and realizing sustainable land transportation across the country. Moreover, this chapter discusses sustainable practices in manufacturing and packaging. The authors' main point is that individuals, governments, and manufacturers should embrace, adopt, promote, and implement sustainable practices in transportation, manufacturing, and packaging to protect the environment and promote the health and safety of people.

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According to the authors, some of the sustainable practices of inland transportation include the promotion of bicycling and walking, effective and efficient use of land, technological solutions implementation, price regulation procedures such as congestion pricing and carbon taxes, public awareness creation, and traffic calming initiatives. These practices are aimed at saving the environment by encouraging the use of alternative means of transportation and high-quality fuels. The other goal of these practices is to save the environment from the deleterious impacts of land transportation. Most of the sustainable practices in land transportation are also geared toward increasing environmental and human security or safety, minimizing the number of harmful emissions such as carbon dioxide into the environment, and saving nature. Therefore, sustainable transportation is one that meets the basic needs of people in an efficient and safe manner while at the same time ensuring that harm to the environment and the health of people is avoided.

Furthermore, sustainability in the manufacturing sector which is also responsible for the emission of toxic gases into the environment should be given top priority by governments to save the environment from further deterioration and depletion of its natural resources. The need for sustainable practices in manufacturing is thus to ensure that resources within the environment are used responsibly in a manner that benefit both the present and future generations and avoids their depletion and generation of harmful wastes.

The benefits of employing sustainable practices in manufacturing are that they help in ensuring minimal damage to the environment while supporting the profitable manufacture of goods and promote the efficient energy consumption and optimum use of natural resources. Additionally, the adoption of sustainable practices by manufacturers is advantageous in that it improves the bottom line, attracts new customers, and boots the image of companies. Some of the factors that influence the implementation of sustainable manufacturing practices include information, organizational values and structures, and methods and processes of production.

Examples of sustainable practices that are utilized in the manufacturing sector are categorized into those for energy and resource consumption, product design, and production. Sustainable packaging practices include increased use of the recycled fiber, elimination of paper coming from questionable forestry practices, increase in recycling and in-store recovery, elimination of toxic labels and inks, reduction in carbon footprints, supply chain, and full lifecycle approach, and the reduction in overall packaging and increase in efficiency.