Waste minimisation is a valuable tool required to achieve sustainable development, meet strengthening global requirements and develop clean, competitive industry in the Asia-Pacific region. Good house keeping and inventory control have already been demonstrated to achieve impressive waste reduction results. Treatment practices used to meet legislation typically offer no financial incentive and achieve only media transfer. Legislative focus continues to move towards an integrated approach and companies are beginning to appreciate associated expenses, rendering treatment less desirable than prevention at source. Design to achieve source reduction is gaining greater emphasis in industry and offers key opportunities towards a sustainable future.

Procedures for process design are considered to be well established. Recent integration techniques and financial optimisation tools have begun to incorporate the concept of pollution prevention into preliminary design. Health and environmental impacts are, however, not typically considered explicitly until detailed design, when design changes often become financially undesirable. A full assessment during earlier stages of process design is generally not feasible but incorporation of indicators offers the opportunity to directly consider health and environmental impact at the point where process synthesis decisions are made.

This paper demonstrates a comprehensive method to provide assessment of human health and environmental impact during conceptual process design. A number of quantitative indices, based on public domain data, are used to represent potential local and global impacts. Indices are combined in several ways to provide the designer with a focus on the greatest potentials for risk reduction. A broader evaluation is achievable by combination with financial and technical considerations to identify an optimum design.

The method has significant application potential in both developing and developed countries, at all levels. Limited resources can be selectively allocated to maximise benefits from identified extrinsic and intrinsic release reduction opportunities. Calculations are performable by hand or may be integrated into a variety of computer packages. In conjunction with process simulation the method provides rapid feedback for environmental optimisation of processes and opportunity identification.