The Weight of Nations - Material Outflows from Industrial Economies

This report shows conclusively that the atmosphere is by far the biggest dumping ground for the wastes of industrial economies. Output flows are dominated by the extraction and use of fossil energy resources: when bulky flows like water, soil erosion and earth moving are excluded, carbon dioxide accounts, on average, for 80 percent by weight of material outflows in the five study countries. There are positive trends. Quantities of solid wastes sent to landfills have stabilized or declined, in some cases by 30 percent or more. Reductions have been achieved thanks to increased recycling efforts and greater use of incineration as a disposal option. This latter practice, however, has resulted in waste outputs being diverted from land to air, contributing further to atmospheric pollution. To what extent are industrial economies breaking the link between economic growth and material throughput? The evidence for decoupling is either strong or weak, depending on the measure used. Despite strong economic growth over the period 1975--1996, resource inputs and waste outputs rose relatively little on a per capita basis and fell dramatically when measured against units of economic output. Given declining real prices for most resource commodities, and continued subsidies for resource extraction and use in most OEC countries, the extent of decoupling may be regarded as remarkable and possibly symptomatic of profound underlying structural changes in the nature of industrial economies. WRI: THE WEIGHT OF NATIONS vi