- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
Eco-friendly, or environmentally friendly, is a term applied to goods, services, processes or people deemed to do minimal harm to the environment. The term is shorthand for 'ecologically friendly', ecology being the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environment.
Industry:Natural environment
The greenhouse effect keeps the earth's average temperature at around 14°C. Without it, the planet would be too cold to support human life. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere raise the earth's temperature by trapping energy from the sun after it has hit the earth's surface, rather than allowing it to escape back into space.
Industry:Natural environment
Natural and industrial gases that trap heat from the Earth and warm the surface. The Kyoto Protocol restricts emissions of six greenhouse gases: natural (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane) and industrial (perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride).
Industry:Natural environment
Dioxins are chlorine-containing chemical compounds formed and emitted into the atmosphere usually as byproducts of human activity - waste incineration and fuel combustion being common examples. They are also formed by natural processes such as forest fires and volcanoes. Some dioxins have harmful properties and could, in sufficient concentration, be harmful to the environment and human health.
Industry:Natural environment
An ecosystem is the term applied to the interaction of a community of different living (organic) species - plants, animals and micro-organisms - with non-living (or inorganic) factors, such as atmospheric gases, temperature and light. When the balance of an ecosystem is changed - by the introduction of new elements or dramatic rises in one or more of them - the normal functioning of the ecosystem can be disrupted.
Industry:Natural environment
Emissions are the CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) produced by energy use, usually calculated and stated as an annual tally: also referred to as your carbon footprint. Your personal emissions can be direct - such as the gas you personally use to heat your home or the petrol you burn to power your car - or indirect - meaning the energy use that has gone into the products or services you buy. The latter, such as the emissions caused by the manufacture of your new TV, or the packaging your food comes in, are also referred to as embodied emissions.
Industry:Natural environment
Something that is energy efficient achieves the greatest useful output for the least expenditure of energy, or improves the ratio between the two. For example, energy efficient car engines improve the car's fuel economy.
Industry:Natural environment
A fluorescent bulb or tube uses the flow of electricity to excite mercury vapour in an inert gas (argon or neon), which creates invisible ultraviolet light. A coating of phosphor on the inside of the glass then converts this into visible light - a process known as fluorescence. They have higher energy efficiency and longer life than traditional incandescent bulbs. See also CFLs/low-energy lightbulbs.
Industry:Natural environment
Fossil fuels are the deposits of crude oil, natural gas and coal formed by the decay, over millions of years, of organic material (plants, trees animals and bacteria). Because the combustion of fossil fuels releases carbon that has been out of the natural carbon cycle for so long (unlike with living or more recently dead organic matter, known as biomass) it affects the balance between stored carbon and carbon present in the atmosphere as CO2, a greenhouse gas.
Industry:Natural environment
