Consumption, Resources, and the Environment: What You Need To Know.

 Hey everybody!

As some of you may know, I have been taking a biorenewable resources course this semester, primarily to learn about these growing resources and how they are impacting our ever developing world. This blog serves as a way for my friends and family to get a view into what I have been learning and what I thought would be useful information.

With the stage the developing world is at now, almost everyone is guaranteed to be “using up” resources in some way - in the form of non-renewable resources (resources that are mined), renewable resources (typically nature derived resources - wood or sunlight), and biorenewable resources (like plants). Specifically in the case of using all these resources, there are significant impacts that stem from consumption. The population is only growing and with that, as mentioned before, it leads to a higher consumption of resources as the world develops at a faster rate. According to a study conducted by Friends of the Earth Europe, humans use about 50% more natural resources compared to just 30 years ago. The study notes that this is especially true in wealthier, more developed nations where the resources are consumed more so, both for public and private usage; with the people in these more developed countries consuming about “10 times more natural resources” than the less developed nations. 

The figure displayed below is from Lesson 2 and was recorded in the New Mexico Mineral Resources, but it notes how high consumption is linked to economic growth - with this example specifically applying to the United States. 

This economic growth is something that all developing nations strive for as it helps dominate a nation’s place as compared to others. Some countries do sell resources to others as a form of trade and political ties, but it leads to a lot of demand and as a consequence, overconsumption which has grave implications. One of the chief impacts being that of the environmental impact - the use and development of these products used on a daily basis leads to issues regarding physical disruption of the surfaces through mining, and just impacting quality of water and air supply due to the production (Lesson 3). The additional mining and usage of fossil fuels, leads to increased carbon emissions which is one of the main causes of global warming. 

Through this extended and over-usage of materials such as fossil fuels, the extraction and process of using the products leads to greenhouse gas emissions, which is what is affecting the climate (Lesson 4). To combat the long term effects of these emissions, it gives rise for the user of better alternatives such as through biorenewable resources. Global warming has already been notably connected to issues such as through climate change, and these changes are only going to become more exacerbated unless something is done to mitigate the issue. An article regarding the Life Cycle Assessment provides some input on a way individual consumers can make more conscious decisions. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to actually quantify the impacts of different products, and can be used as a quantitative measure of just how much these resources are being used in day to day products. But being aware about the LCA can be useful in making conscious decisions as consumers to buy better products that are more sustainable and can ideally have the general consumers be more informed about their purchases. 

So far this unit was extremely informative about how big of an impact consumerism has had on the planet and how that impact is only projected to grow unless something is done. While it cannot all be attributed to a single consumer, the more people are aware of the issues at hand and consciously make better decisions to be more sustainable and encourage others to do the same, the better it would be in the long run. I hope this short blog post will be useful to others as it has been to me learning this material!


References:

  1. Friends of the Earth Europe Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3262259/

  2. Lesson 2 Figure: Mineral Resources of New Mexico: https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/resources/minerals/home.html

Lesson 2: Our Resources, Our Consumption, BBE 1002, UMN

  1. Lesson 3: Resource Impacts, BBE 1002, UMN

  2. Lesson 4: Carbon Cycle, BBE 1002, UMN

  3. What is the Life Cycle Assessment?:

https://www.rit.edu/sustainabilityinstitute/blog/what-life-cycle-assessment-lca#:~:text=While%20evaluating%20the%20environmental%20impacts,based%20on%20a%20complete%20LCA.

Lesson 6: Environmental Assessment through LCA, BBE 1002, UMN

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