11.04.1 Using Resources Sustainably
Syllabus
Humans use the Earth’s resources to provide warmth, shelter, food and transport.
Natural resources, supplemented by agriculture, provide food, timber, clothing and fuels.
Finite resources from the Earth, oceans and atmosphere are processed to provide energy and materials.
Chemistry plays an important role in improving agricultural and industrial processes to provide new products and in sustainable development, which is development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Students should be able to:
state examples of natural products that are supplemented or replaced by agricultural and synthetic products
distinguish between finite and renewable resources given appropriate information.
extract and interpret information about resources from charts, graphs and tables
use orders of magnitude to evaluate the significance of data.
What does this mean?
Natural Resources
Natural Resources are simply those things around us that we use to allow us to live our lives.
Basic resources that humans need are food, water and Oxygen.
But if these were the only resources available we wouldn't last long.
In most environments we also need shelter and warmth to survive, and we may need transport to get around.
Most of the above, as well as clothing, can be made from natural products.
We can burn wood or peat or animal waste, we can live in caves or log-cabins or skin-tents, we could gather wild berries and hunt animals for meat and skins to make into clothes.
We just don't want to.
People have flourished since they invented agriculture - the ability to grow our plant-based food, and raise animals for meat.
This lets us make natural textiles from wool, linen, cotton and also to make leather shoes etc.
If we manage forests carefully we can grow entirely renewable wood for fuel and housing.
Finite Resources
But people don't only consume resources that are renewable - we use resources that will not regenerate.
These are finite - they'll run out.
WE can use finite energy and mineral resources to improve our lives by growing more and better food and in many other ways.
But if we run out of materials then future generations may be without them.
And if we use them without thought then we may cause unintended pollution.
Fertilisers are a great benefit to people - but can harm waterways, for example.
Fisheries are a great food source - but even the Grand Banks off Canada has been almost fished-out so that there are very few cod remaining in what used to be the biggest source of cod in the world.
Fish farms sound good - they mean we can eat salmon all year without killing wild fish.
But too many farmed salmon in small areas are introducing pests and diseases that affect wild salmon badly.
So, even when we try to minimise impact we can get it wrong.
It will be the job of chemists to find synthetic products we can use when finite resources are used up, and solutions to problems of over-consumption which don't accidentally make things worse.