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Get the knowledge: How products impact the earth’s resources
Economic growth has many benefits, helping millions of people around the world to escape poverty. As incomes rise, living conditions and access to health and education have improved. But economic growth comes at a cost: expanding populations and consumption have vastly increased demand for resources. How we tackle supply and demand for the Earth’s finite resources is a critical element of sustainable consumption.
Understanding global consumption and the extraction of minerals, metal ores and raw materials used in everyday consumer goods is essential to more sustainable consumption and production.
The UN International Resource Panel develops data for governments, policy researchers and interested stakeholders to better understand and trace the linkages between economic growth and raw material usage. It’s fascinating data. For example, it shows that the US is extracting around a quarter more metal ores today than it did back in 1970.
For consumers, this is vital as it shows how, despite increasing our understanding of resource footprint, we are still using more, not less from the Earth. This needs to change if we are to manage our planet more sustainably.
Sustainable consumption and production
The Life Cycle Initiative, One Planet Network and the International Resource Panel have developed a Hotspot Analysis Tool for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP-HAT) to help governments prioritise and set policies to tackle unsustainable practices.
It can be used by anyone interested to see information across a number of dashboards. For example, this view shows the impacts of households in Germany. Quarrying and the oil and gas industries dominate use of raw materials, but consumption of goods sees impacts across a wide range of sectors, led by food, agriculture, construction products and fabricated metals.
Earth Overshoot Day counts the days until humanity has used up all the resources that Earth regenerates annually
Convened by the World Resource Institute, Resource Watch also features all kinds of data useful to the aspiring green consumer. To help navigate what is on offer, the site includes a helpful ‘how to’ page.
As the global population climbs toward a projected 9.8bn people in 2050, world food demand is projected to increase by another 70% relative to 2006. Numbers like these illustrate why it’s key we understand resource footprints, our use of the Earth’s wealth, and seek to consume, eat and live more sustainably.
Rare elements
One of the most pressing issues is that we are at risk of running out of some of the Earth’s 90 naturally-occurring elements, if we continue to mine, use and dispose of them. Each of these elements are the building blocks of everything on the planet, including all the products we buy. They are also essential for delivering services, such as energy and water.
The European Chemical Society version of the periodic table shows each element in terms of its abundance. Elements coloured red indicate those that we are currently using in a way that threatens supply in 100 years or less. Elements under threat include arsenic, gallium, germanium, hafnium, helium, indium, silver, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, yttrium and zinc.
Some of these have important uses, such as gallium, used to make high-quality mirrors, light-emitting diodes and solar cells, helium used to cool the magnets in MRI scanners, hafnium is used in nuclear reactors, indium tin oxide is used as a transparent conducting layer in touch screen phones and tellurium is used as an alloy in semiconductor applications.
Elements that are orange or yellow are seeing increased use that will likely result in problems in the future too.
Options to tackle the problem include reducing demand for certain products, for example keeping mobile phones in use longer, designing rare elements out, or making recovering a viable option.
Resource footprints
Resource or ecological footprints, such as those developed by the Global Footprint Network, are scientific tools that compare the demands of individuals, governments, businesses and countries on Earth’s resources, with the planet’s capacity to regenerate and meet our needs.
Resource footprints can show us in simple, meaningful ways how lifestyles, economies and choices often outstrip our planet’s ability to sustain us.
How many Earths?
Earth Overshoot Day is probably the best-known example of resource and ecological footprinting. From the start of each year, it counts the days until humanity has used up all the resources that Earth regenerates annually. By 28 July 2022, we’d already used up our quota for the year. During Covid, as economic activity in many areas slowed, the overshoot day was pushed back, but otherwise the trend has been in the other direction.
Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by assessing the amount of ecological resources the Earth is able to generate each year (known as its biocapacity) divided by human’s ecological footprint (demand for resources), and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year. The date illustrates how badly we are outstripping Earth’s ability to sustain us, and we can also see trends on how we are doing as the years pass.
Another way of looking at the data, is how many Earths we need to sustain lifestyles at current rates of consumption and production. At present Global Footprint Network estimates the figure is 1.75, and predicts on our current rate of growth, we will need two Earths by 2030.
What happens next?
While the Global Footprint Network data is gloomy (it also notes that humanity has been in ‘ecological overshoot’ for over 50 years, and that the persistence of overshoot has now committed the world, with great likelihood, to global warming beyond 1.5°C), there are many effective and economically-beneficial solutions that can reverse the situation and support regeneration.
Opportunities stem from all sectors: new commercially available technologies or services you can buy as well as local government development strategies you can support. National public policies you can vote for, or best practices supported by civil society initiatives and academia you can share.
The Earth Overshoot Day website provides positive examples of innovations under five pillars of intervention: healthy biosphere, energy, food, cities, and population.
For example, moving to smart grids and higher efficiency in our electric systems would move Overshoot Day back 21 days. Reducing food waste by half would save another 13 days. Growing trees with other crops on the same land, also known as tree intercropping, would save 2.1 days, among many other options for good.
Consumer awareness, business benefits
There is some evidence that consumer awareness of the issues is having a positive impact on business activities. According to the Eco-Awakening report from The Economist Intelligence Unit, commissioned by WWF, online searches for sustainable goods globally have increased by more than 70% over the past five years.
Taking a specific sector, the report found that more than half of fashion and textile industry C-suite executives said consumers drove their focus on sustainability; environmental activism ranked second at 35%.
As a result of this pressure, two thirds of the businesses surveyed said they had committed to sourcing sustainably produced raw materials, and 60% now collect data on supply chain sustainability.
A World Economic Forum report suggests that resource footprints matter to businesses, and are driving positive transitions in the food, infrastructure and extractives (minerals and metals) sectors. It says that using resource footprint knowledge could generate over $10tn in annual business value by 2030 and create 395m jobs.
Most of this is based on preserving and regenerating biodiversity (link to biodiversity article), but the report notes that for mining and resource extraction, improving resource recovery could save businesses $225bn and reduce water use by 75% in the next decade. New technologies and more mechanisation could enhance material recovery rates by up to 50% – reducing the need to mine new materials.
For example, circular models in the automotive sector, where parts like transmissions are refurbished and reused, retains more value and uses less energy than recycling. The circular economy will be critical to better resource efficiency as one of its aims is to keep materials in use as products, components or raw materials for as long as possible, avoiding waste and retaining materials’ intrinsic value.
How cities can help
Between 70-80% of all people are expected to live in urban areas by 2050. To help with the resource footprint implications, the Global Footprint Network City and Regional Work programme has developed smart city planning and urban development strategies. This will be important to make sure the trend to urbanisation is achieved with resource efficiency.
Ways we can change include energy-efficient buildings, integrated zoning, compact cities, and effective options for people-powered and public transportation. They’re creative, economically viable, and ready to deploy at scale.
With them, we can make ourselves more resilient. With steps like this, if we move the overshoot date back six days each year, humanity can be out of overshoot before 2050, and resource footprint can match what the Earth can provide.
Check it out
For more information on these issues:
- Global Footprint Network is an advocacy and information NGO that works to advance the science of sustainability. Key resources include the Earth overshoot day (the day in the year when we are using more resources than we can regenerate), the Footprint Calculator and Living Planet Report (with WWF and ZSL).
- UN’s International Resource Panel global material flows database.
- The Life Cycle Initiative, One Planet Network and the International Resource Panel have developed a Hotspot Analysis Tool for Sustainable Consumption and Production to identify unsustainable practices to help governments set and prioritise policies.
- Resource Watch, convened by the World Resources Institute, provides data from many sources and includes a helpful ‘how to’ page.
- WWF has calculated the human footprint price of a typical day. Every activity withdraws resources with a price that extends beyond the one measured in dollars and cents.
- European Chemical Society Period Pains image of elements under threat
- Earth Overshoot Day solutions webpage, showing how innovation among other activities, can reverse overconsumption.
- The Eco-Awaking report commissioned by WWF by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
- Future of nature and Business report from the World Economic Forum.
- Global Footprint Network Cities and Regional Work smart city planning and urban development strategies.
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