THE WORLD'S EXPERTS AT WASTE

Norman Myers

As indicated in my first article ("The Most Over-Populated Country" Pop!ulation Press, April/May 2002), Americans make up the third most populous country, with 285 million people and climbing fast. Equally to the point, they are far and away the most wasteful country.

The daily waste generated by an American's lifestyle amounts to twenty times his or her body weight. In fact, Americans are ten times more efficient at wasting resources than at using them. The average American uses more than twice as much fossil fuel as the average Briton or Japanese. The United States alone consumes one third of the world's paper, even though it has only 6% of the world's forests, and it recycles only half as much waste paper as does Germany. The typical American discards nearly one ton of trash per person per year, two to three times as much as by a typical West European. Every three months Americans junk enough aluminum cans to replace all the country's commercial aircraft.

The biggest waste sector is probably energy. True, things improved quite a bit in the wake of the 1973 and 1979 oil price hikes, when Americans learned to get more work out of every drop of oil and lump of coal. According to energy expert Amory Lovins, Americans now save $200 billion worth of energy per year-but they still waste $300 billion worth. Nor is the waste binge confined to individual citizens. Big business competes well in the waste stakes. U.S. power plants waste energy equal to Japan's total energy use.

If we look beyond energy and consider American business's operations overall, we find it is spectacularly wasteful in its use of raw materials. According to industry analyst Paul Hawken, only 6% of business' materials flow end up in products of any sort, and just 1% in durable products.

There are lots of further measures of waste. Some 80% of products are thrown out after just one use; 97% of energy from a power station is lost before it lights up a conventional light bulb; 85% of gasoline's energy goes to push pistons, driveshaft, etc, within a car, rather than to push the car along the road; and 90% of irrigation water does not reach within two inches of plant roots.

Bottom-line reckoning: wasted energy, water, metals, wood, soil, etc, cost Americans at least $1 trillion per year, or $3500 per person. According to Hawken and Lovins, the cost could even be twice as much.

Hawken and Lovins also point out in their book Natural Capitalism (reader, it's as fascinating as a whodunit novel) that each product owes its existence to a specific set of inputs (materials, energy) and a specific set of outputs (consumer goods, plus pollution and other waste). The whole lot is known to environmental economists as the product's "ecological rucksack." To make a semi-conductor chip wastes 100,000 times the chip's weight; a laptop computer, 4000 times its weight. Using modern fertilizers and pesticides, to grow one calorie of grain can require 1,000 calories of petroleum products, and to grow one ton of grain can take 1,000 tons of water. To produce a quart of orange juice takes two quarts of gasoline and 1,000 quarts of water. The much-vaunted productivity of American agriculture is a myth. It is the most resource demanding in the world.

How much land is needed to provide the materials supporting one individual's lifestyle, and how much environment is needed to absorb his or her waste? A creative analyst, Mathis Wackernagel, at the Redefining Progress organization based in Oakland, CA, calls it the "ecological footprint." He calculates that a typical American's footprint (including land in countries way over the horizon) amounts to twelve hectares (30 acres) to support his or her lifestyle. This corresponds to 30 football fields put together. By contrast, the average Canadian lives on a footprint one third less, and the average Italian well over half less. With a global population of over six billion people, nature provides a "fair earthshare" of just two hectares (5 acres) of "bioproductive space" for every person in the world.

This calculation throws light on the energy debate, and especially the role of fossil fuels with their carbon dioxide emissions that cause half of global warming processes. Recall that the United States with less than 5% of the world's population accounts for 25% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. To cite energy guru John Holdren of Harvard University, we are not so much running short of energy as running short of environmental capacity to absorb fossil fuels' wastes.

Here, then, is more evidence that the United States is surely over-populated already. Or, at the very least, taking up an undue amount of the planet's "fair earthshare" living space. Is this befitting the most "advanced" country in the world?

Dr. Norman Myers is a Fellow of Oxford University. He was a Senior Advisor to the World Conference on Population and Development, and is to the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development. He has worked on population issues with USAID, the World Bank, the Population Council and Population Action International, among other bodies, both governmental and non-governmental.