We are all aware of the huge amount of waste generated in the West but in our daily lives it is easy to forget this. In 2011 I came across some startling data in the seminal book Natural Capitalism: the New Industrial Revolution by Hawken, Lovins and Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute, 1999), which I can thoroughly recommend.
The information below is for the USA but other developed countries need not feel sanctimonious!
The data will be an understatement because the world-wide industrial-cum-consumer engine will have grown a lot in the intervening 20 years, although some efficiency and recycling measures will have been taken.
On average the US citizen (1990s) generates 1 million pounds of waste per year. In the nation as a whole the annual wastage includes:
- 3.5 billion (3,500,000,000) pounds of landfilled carpet
- 3.3 trillion (3,300,000,000,000) pounds of carbon dioxide
- 19 billion pounds of polystyrene peanuts (I’ve no idea what these are but this is not a joke)
- 28 billion pounds of food discarded at home
- 710 billion pounds of hazardous industrial waste
- 3.7 trillion pounds of construction debris
Add to this the waste generated abroad on behalf of US citizens and subtract the 2% of waste which is recycled (mainly paper, glass, plastic, aluminium and steel) and we get 250 trillion pounds of US resources transformed into nonproductive matter each year.
One can only quake at the thought of these being scaled up globally. A third world country typically produces less than 10% of these amounts per person, yet they all aspire to develop western-type economies, including China and India with a combined population of over 2.5 billion, which is 8x the US population. Since the above data was compiled China's GDP has grown to be roughly equal to that of the USA. India has also greatly increased its output of waste.
Can anything be done about it? Yes, but it needs a change of mindset to make a real impact and with it the whole economic system and infrastructure would need to be transformed. International trade, agriculture, manufacturing, service industry, energy production, transport and education will have to change, since these all generate waste either directly or indirectly. It i. s also linked to the global warming problem.
The current coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the wastefulness of our way of life, especially in the West. Just a few months of reduced consumption and transport have made visible impacts on the environment, which is encouraging. New methods of recycling plastics are being talked about and put into practice. There is also a growing awareness that nature itself is able to heal some of the injury we have inflicted. We need a few leading nations to cooperate to make a big difference.
The current coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the wastefulness of our way of life, especially in the West. Just a few months of reduced consumption and transport have made visible impacts on the environment, which is encouraging. New methods of recycling plastics are being talked about and put into practice. There is also a growing awareness that nature itself is able to heal some of the injury we have inflicted. We need a few leading nations to cooperate to make a big difference.
see also Story of a canned drink
John
cosmik.jo@googlemail.com
