Glossary of Environmental Science - V

V

• veloway - cycle track; cycleway; contrasts with freeway.
• vinyl - a type of plastic (usually PVC) used to make products such as fruit juice bottles, credit cards, pipes and hoses.
• virtual water - the volume of water required to produce a commodity or service. First coined by Professor J.A. Allan of the University of London in the early 1990s, though this is now more widely known as cf. embedded (embodied) water.
• visual waste audit - observing, estimating and recording data on waste streams and practices without physical weighing.
• volatile organic compound (VOC) – molecules containing carbon and differing proportions of other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, fluorine and chlorine. With sunlight and heat they form ground-level ozone.
• volt - The unit of potential difference between two points is the volt (V) (commonly called voltage). One thousand volts equals 1 kilovolt (kV).