Drowning in plastic
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Drowning in plastic
Globally, freshwater resources are by no means equally distributed. In fact, 2.3 billion people in twenty-one countries live in geo-graphies that are designated “water-stressed basins,” which means that there are only 1000 to 1700 cubic meters of water per person per year. Another 1.7 billion, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization
... See moreJames E. McWilliams • Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly
humanity has entered a new era of global resource use in which commodities will no longer be cheap and abundant.9
The Worldwatch Institute • State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
we waste water enormously and, so far, we have been slow to adopt many effective changes that would reverse undesirable habits and trends.
Vaclav Smil • How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
Wine may soon be distributed in flat plastic bottles, in a move that could reduce carbon emissions and costs in the industry’s supply chain.
The Guardian • Post modern: letterbox-shaped products come into their own
150 Mt in the year 2000, a mass far surpassing that of aluminum and equal to about 18% of the world’s steel production. By the late 1990s the U.S. plastics industry employed 10 times as many people (1.5 million) people as did steelmaking, another 850,000 were in upstream industries that supplied the raw materials, and 50,000 worked in recycling
Vaclav Smil • Transforming the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences
human-manufactured plastics have found their way into every crevice, even in the deepest trenches of the ocean and the air above the Arctic.27 In the Anthropocene, many human activities become so large they are hard to fathom. In the Anthropocene, enough plastic has been made that were it cling film it could wrap around the Earth completely.28 In t
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