Impacts
Wastage is a form of immoral and selfish behavior. How so, you ask? How often, when we waste water, do we pause to think about the half of the world’s population with no access to clean water? How often, whilst we are letting electricity and energy go to waste, do we remember to consider the many people who have no means to light up their dark nights? Many a time, wastage is a bad habit which we commit unknowingly, and many precious resources are lost through this act. To trace this problem back to the source, one must realize that there is a lack of general awareness about conservation. The consequences to this though, are unthinkable.
Impact on Resources
As society progresses, the problem of wastage is gaining foothold among people. However, most people still lack awareness in this field. Take these astounding numbers for example. Of the 13,900,000,000 cubic meters of water on the Earth’s surface, only less than 1 percent of this is freshwater, and far less is actually available for use. Almost half of the water we use every year is contaminated. Conserving water should be the responsibility of every citizen of this planet, yet water wastage is becoming increasingly common.
In China, one of the top 12 water-deprived nations, availability of freshwater is less than a quarter of the world average; there are over 500 cities facing water shortage, 3.2 billion hectares of agricultural land undergoing drought and 50 million people and 30 million farm animals facing a water crisis. If we were to let just one drop of water escape a leaking tap every second, we would lose 360 tonnes of water an hour. What then, would be the consequences?
Conservation of water is the responsibility of every person; the last drop of water in the world could be our own tears.
Impact on Economy
The contents of a recent article about the annual food wastage in England are both shocking and saddening. Each year, food worth 8 billion pounds is discarded, about a third of the total worth of what consumers purchase. The discarded food weighs in a total of approximately 6.7 million tonnes, enough to fill 8 rugby stadiums. 1500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission could have been cut back, should the food have not been wasted. This is equivalent to a 20% decrease in number of cars on the road. Besides its high monetary costs, the decomposition of wasted food also releases methane, unnecessarily contributing to the greenhouse effect. According to statistics, the annual emission of carbon dioxide related to the transport, packaging and production of these food products amounts to at least 1500 tonnes. Also, the government would then pump large amounts of capital into the reducing of the impacts to the environment, completing a stage in the vicious cycle.
Impact on the Future
What we enjoy today, what we see, hear, feel, smell and taste, are provisions of Mother Nature. Today, we bask ourselves in creature comforts and luxury such as air-conditioning. What we fail to realize, for example, is that the simple act of air-conditioning could be killing our very own children. The usage of air-conditioning releases even more greenhouse gases into the air, thereby heating the environment even more and thus increasing our reliance on air-conditioning. The oil, deforestation, extinction crises that we face today are a result of our own misdeeds, coupled with that of our predecessors. What we do today serves only to escalate and magnify the impact on our own children.