General Aspects of Environmental Degradation vs. Technological Development Progression

A look at natural resources in terms of life cycle reveals several environmental problems related to production and consumption and combines resource use and waste generation. The use of resources and the generation of waste are special impacts on the environment, but the two issues share many of the same driving forces – largely related to how and where we produce and consume goods and how we use natural capital for economic sustainability development and consumption. More recently, life cycle thinking has been introduced as the guiding principle of resource management. Environmental impacts are considered throughout the life cycle of products and services to avoid or minimize the transfer of environmental stress between different stages of the life cycle and from one country to another. With the passage of time and the long-term activities of the human factor, the contents of certain metals have been completely and permanently changed in relation to their natural existence in the environment. These changes can have a significant influence on the physiology and ecology of the organisms adapted to survive in thus created conditions of higher metal contents. The anthropogenic activities for exploitation of natural resources and their processing through adequate technological processes and management of the waste produced by the same represent a global problem of pollution of the environment. The distribution of the different chemical elements, including the potentially toxic metals, creates characteristic conditions for the living organisms. Considering that their contents in the environment are variable, it is important to identify the regions with changed contents, differing from the natural distribution of the elements in the different segments of the biosphere.