Anthropogenic: originating in human activity
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Reuters
Table of Contents: Municipal Waste Hazardous Waste Waste Trade Carbon Dioxide Emissions Nuclear Waste Organic Water Pollutants Oceanic Garbage What Can You Do? About This Atlas Atlas of Anthropogenic Waste
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Industrialiation and consumerism has led humans all over the world to expend all sorts of materials, eventually casting them into thier surroundings. Some of these substances may prove to be hazardous to them in the long-term. Through thier throw-away habits, people are harming the soil, water and air that they need to survive, thus they are harming themselves.This atlas attempts to study various activities and types of waste to demonstrate both the broad geographic impact as well as the numerous manners in which we are producing it. Some of the following pages will reveal the limited data available for the specified types mentioned herein, but there are others still which are not included for the data cannot keep up with the speed of its development. New forms of waste like electronic waste (pictured left) and biomedical waste pose even greater threats, yet are just now being considered by some agencies to be a cause for concern. For obvious reasons, there are even greater difficulties in finding data on how much energy, water, and food are not used, though they may be spent (for example, lights left on in an empty house, water left running while brushing teeth, or leftovers thrown in the garbage). Even in the production and transmission of energy, a portion is lost irrevokably (see graph below). Human-generated waste is something that has come to be accepted and yet is not understood as a pressing concern. Because of this, it is hard to quantify the exact amounts of by-products and materials which are deemed unuseable on a daily basis. Furthermore, data related to these commonplace activities is not often gathered, so it is also rare that it is analyzed, thus further perpetuating this unconscious behavior. The good news is that because these are human-generated wastes, they can be reduced if we choose to recognize and make necesabove graph courtesy: UNEP GRID-Arendal sary changes. cover image: smokefilledworld.com page 2
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