Global resource consumption at 100 bn tonnes for 1st time, recycling falls

Global use of materials is projected to balloon to 170-184 billion tonnes by mid-century, the report said.

The world is using up more than 100 billion tonnes of natural resources per year for the first time ever while global recycling of raw materials has fallen, according to a report released Tuesday.

The share of minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass feeding into the global economy that is reused declined in two years from an already paltry 9.1 percent to 8.6 today, the Circularity Gap Report 2020 found.

"No country is meeting the basic needs of its citizens while also operating within the physical boundaries of our planet," said Marc de Wit, a director at the non-profit Circle Economy and lead author of the report.

The resources fuelling the world economy increased more than eight percent in just two years from 93 billion tonnes in 2015 to 100.6 billion in 2017, the last year for which data is available.

Since 1970, the human population has doubled, the global economy has grown fourfold, and trade has expanded tenfold, a trajectory that -- in the absence of widespread recycling -- relentlessly pushes up the demand for energy and resources.

Global use of materials is projected to balloon to 170-184 billion tonnes by mid-century, the report said.

To improve living standards -- especially in low-income countries -- while also protecting ecosystems that provide clear water, air and soil, the world must vastly boost the share of recycled natural resources, the authors said.

Wealthy nations, the authors note, consume 10 times more resources per person than in the developing world, and produce far more waste.

Rich countries must "take responsibility for the impact of their imports and exports," the report said, noting that much of what they consume comes from less developed nations, while much of their waste is exported.

The report also noted that recycling rates are high in poorer countries, as waste can "provide a valuable source of revenue for informal workers." "China, for instance, has pioneered eco-industrial parks where the waste of one business becomes the feedstock for another.

You can buy Apple, Microsoft or a football club by just recycling plastic

If someone could collect and recycle all the unrecycled plastic on earth, this person would be richer than any individual on the planet.

Business Standard : This year, I served on the judging panel for The Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Year.

On Dec. 18, we announced the winner: 90.5 per cent, the amount of plastic that has never been recycled. Okay – but why is that such a big deal?

Much like Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” competition, the international statistic is meant to capture the zeitgeist of this year. The judging panel accepted nominations from the statistical community and the public at large for a statistic they feel shines a light on today’s most pressing issues.

Last year’s winner was 69. That’s the annual number of Americans killed, on average, by lawn mowers – compared to two Americans killed annually, on average, by immigrant jihadist terrorists and the 11,737 Americans killed annually by being shot by another American. That figure, first shared in The Huffington Post, was highlighted in a viral tweet by Kim Kardashian in response to the proposed migrant ban.

This year’s statistic came into prominence from a United Nations report. The chair of the judges and RSS president, Sir David Spiegelhalter, said: “It’s really concerning that so little plastic has ever been recycled and, as a result, so much plastic waste has leached out into the world’s environment. It’s a great, growing and genuinely world problem.”

Let’s take a closer look at this year’s winning statistic. About 90.5 percent of the 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste produced since mass production began about 60 years ago is now lying around our planet in landfills and oceans or has been incinerated. If we don’t change our ways, by 2050, there will be about 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste.

When the panel first began looking at this statistic, I really didn’t have any comprehension of what billions of tons of plastic means. Based on a study from 2015 and some back of the envelope calculations, that’s the equivalent of 7.2 trillion grocery bags full of plastic as of 2018.

But again, I still didn’t quite have a feel for how much that actually is. People tend to use distance measurements to compare numbers, so I tried that. Assuming that a grocery bag of plastic is about 1 foot high, if you stacked the grocery bags, you could go to the moon and back 5,790 times. That’s starting to feel a bit more real.