Population Effect

The world’s population has increased dramatically over the last 50 years, and with more pressure on resources such as water and food, this is no longer just a science fiction story.

Where China has brought in a ‘one-child’ per family policy, the rest of the world seems to have forgotten their contribution to the current situation. We must all take responsibility for reducing our impact on the world and other people.

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If you don’t think 1 person can have an impact on resources, think of it this way. In the developed world nappies are used for babies up to 2 years old. Each day you would use 5 – 10 nappies, along with wipes, tissues, cotton wool, lotions and creams at each change. If you take the minimum number of changes 5, and times this by 365 days x 2 (years) you would be looking at 3,650 soiled nappies in landfill in addition to the nappy bags, wipes and cotton wool used. This is a lot of waste for one small child. Then there is the production of the nappies, the plastic bags they come in, the production of the wipes and the lotions, all using valuable water in the process. In addition to nappies are the jars of baby food, great if you cook your own food, but a lot is massed produced using glass, paper and water.

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Then as children grow up, we buy them plastic toys, again such production uses natural resources, like rubber, oil for plastics, water for dyes and colours, cardboard to present them in – all of which then ends up in the bin. Some items can be recycled, however, a lot of this ends up in landfill and will take hundreds of years to break down. In the meantime this land cannot be used for anything else and is left to waste.

As adults, we consume massed produced meat, packaged and wrapped in plastic, tinned vegetables and pasta sauces in glass jars and sweets in all sorts of packaging and wrappers. Most of this ends up in waste, when we could have bought fresh ingredients and made our own.

Energy demands have increased over the last 20 years with the advent of the home computer and games consoles. Everything has to be plugged in or run on batteries. The switch to rechargeable batteries has not had the impact it should have, because you need to make sure to recharge the batteries before use. The switch to energy efficient light bulbs hasn’t had the impact it should have done either, because more electrical appliances have come onto the market. Even in cars are attitude to driving has not changed to help our own environment, with people driving not to reach their destination, but just to drive, all the while consuming petrol and producing pollutants.

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So 1 person can produce tonnes of waste just within the first 20 years of their lives.

Thomas Malthus a clergyman wrote a pamphlet in 1798 putting forward the idea that there is a disparity between population growth and the growth in resources and food. Therefore, the threat of over-population is not a new idea, but it does now need to be taken seriously. If we all made a contribution, by recycling more, buying less packaged foods, thinking more about our families, we could reduce the impact on our environment and on ourselves. By sticking to a maximum of ‘2 children per family’ we could make the world a better place for everyone.

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