What is sustainability – less than 24 tonnes of stuff that’s for sure
“In 2008 people around the world consumed 68 billion tonnes of materials, including metals, fossil fuels and biomass.” That’s a lot of stuff being dug out of the ground or cut down every year.
If we shared that out equally we would each have consumed 10 tonnes, but we don’t live equally so the average American consumed 27.5 tonnes a year according to the awesome book “Is sustainability still possible?”. So the average Australian pretty much consumes the same as the average American.
But what does it look like?
Well, imagine a 1 tonnes ute turning up at your door step every 2 weeks with the delivery of your latest consumption.
So every time your yellow recycling bin gets collected by the council, they also dump 1 tonne of stuff on your drive way.
That’s a lot of stuff.
SIMON WILD 