The archetypal image of pollution is usually a factory giving off dark smoke or a city full of cars in a traffic jam. But in our daily life there are products that are little or not at all respectful with the environment that we should start to discard. Above all, when we make the purchase for the house. Because both direct and indirect effects must be taken into account, related to the extraction of the product, its production, its use or in what way and where they become waste. In this AgroCorrn article, we show which are the most polluting products.
Index
What are the products that pollute the most
Has submitted a report of the United Nations Program for Environment (UNEP), Assessing the environmental impacts of consumption and production , in which it appears to reduce impacts on the planet have to change priority two sectors: the energy and food.
The fossil fuel (oil, gas and coal) produce environmental impact themselves (negatively affect climate change, have high toxicity), but also increase the environmental burden of other materials that require a lot of energy, such as metal ores.
As for food products , their production constitutes an inefficient process that occupies soil, negatively affects ecosystems and biodiversity and, in many cases, uses a large amount of water. The meat industry is particularly polluting, both due to the emissions of harmful gases and the increasing use of land and resources to feed animals. It is expected that in 2050 between 40 and 50% of the cereal crops in the world will be produced for animal feed. This circumstance leads the United Nations to recommend a diet with less meat.
In the European Union, a similar study has been carried out in which 283 groups of consumer products were analyzed in eight impact categories (abiotic degradation, acidification, ecotoxicity, climate change, eutrophication, toxicity, reduction of the ozone layer and photochemical oxidation. ). The Environmental Impact of Products study was carried out by the Institute for Prospective Technology (IPTS), of the Joint Research Center of the European Commission. The conclusion is that food and beverages are responsible for between 20 and 30% of the impacts in the different categories, the construction and use of houses , between 20 and 35%, and motorized transport, between 15 and 35%. In other words, these three sectors are responsible for between 70 and 80% of all environmental damage caused by consumption.
In more detail, the study considers that the products with a greater contribution to climate change are motor vehicles (15%), meat (5.5%), heating equipment (4.7%), poultry free range (3.9%), new residences (3.2%), sausages and other prepared meat products (2.5%), milk (2.4%) and cheese (2.1% ).
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