Every year countries such as the UK produces a vast amount of waste every year, especially around the festive christmas period. However, even though around the world more countries are trying to recycle more of their rubbish, there is still a growing population that is producing more trash than the world can cope with. It is therefore crucial that we realize how much waste we are throwing away that could be recycled or used for more significant purposes.
So with that in mind here are five ways in which the world is too excessive in its waste production and how this could lead to a worldwide disaster:
The Malthusian Disaster….
It has been known for a while now that the population has been increasing, rapidly. In fact the population is growing faster than the Earth’s biocapacity to reproduce all the resources that humanity consumes each year. This is because the population grows at a geometric rate as people can pretty much reproduce whenever, however the resources that are necessary for the survival of humanity are restricted to being replenished in incremental batch blocks.
This is because resources like the food and trees used for paper and biomass each year can only grow in certain seasons. This has caused people like Malthus to argue that the human population growth must be put into “check” in order for humanity to live within its means of subsistence. However, whilst it is difficult to stop people breeding without a Chinese-style child tax system, infanticide or castration, people can definitely make more of an effort to recycle their trash, produce less rubbish and use their resources more efficiently…
Buy one, scrap one free
So much food is wasted by consumers. Roughly a third of the food sold in shops worldwide does not get eaten as this food is unnecessarily thrown away or not eaten after its expiry date. For instance, in more developed countries 222 million tonnes of food is thrown away each year,which is about food as much as places such as Sub-Saharan Africa produce each year (at 230 million tonnes). The food that is wasted could definitely be more effectively distributed to places that need it, rather than just being wasted. It would also help if shops ended the buy one get one free sales, as it’s clearly a contributor to producing excessive waste and you could just sell products at half price anyway.
Well it is Christmas...
Even though it is Christmas, countries like the UK still make an excessive amount of waste each year during this festive period. For instance, the amount of card envelopes used each year is enough to cover Big Ben 260,000 times and the amount of wrapping paper that is thrown away can be wrapped around the Earth’s equator 9 times. So we definitely need to reconsider using so much wrapping paper during all the Saturnalian festivities.
Past its expiry date?
In countries like the US 40 percent of consumer food is thrown out and this is most likely because the food is past its so-called expiry date. However, these food dates are sometimes misleading as shops will inevitably want you to buy more food as soon as possible. However, decaying food releases methane, a greenhouse that is 20 times more lethal than carbon emissions.Wasted food could therefore at least be used for compost heaps, right? However, in reality, your thrown out food is most likely to sit in the dump which is why it’s important to reuse or efficiently use up all the food you have at home.
Experiences over things...
Research in modern psychology shows that people prefer experiences over the things you by them. The reasoning behind this is that a good experience forms a memory that will last with you for a lifetime and shows that you are living your life. On the other hand, although some objects can have sentimental value, most objects seemingly do not, as you get bored with them over time. Also research into children who have too many presents bought for them at christmas show these children become less imaginative and get distracted more easily as their lives are clutter with more things than they can focus on.
So do you do enough to recycle and use less waste? What do you personally do to reduce the amount of waste you produce? Comment your answers below and please share this article to raise awareness for the excessive amount of waste produced each year what we can do to stop it.
Morgan Franklin is a freelance writer, editor and designer who works across various sectors and largely online. His work covers everything from business and politics to the environment, ethics and entertainment.