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The combined weight of human-made objects will likely exceed that of all living things on Earth by the end of this year, with a total weight of 1.1 trillion metric tons, or teratons, according to a new study published in the journal. . Nature. The study also found that the number of new objects made each week weighs as much as the 7.7 billion people on the planet.
“The meaning is symbolic in the sense that it tells us something about the primary role humanity plays in shaping the world and the state of the Earth around us,” said Ron Milo, an environmental scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Israel. and a co-author of the study, he told BBC News. “It is a reason for all of us to reflect on our role, how much we consume and how we can try to achieve a better balance between the living world and humanity.”
Milo and his team had previously produced an estimate of the total weight of biomass on Earth and wanted to compare that number to the total mass of human-made objects. To find out, they examined data sets on material flow around the world, Scientific American reported.
Researchers estimate that in the early 20sth In the 20th century, human-made items accounted for only 3 percent of total biomass, including all plants and animals. But the total “anthropogenic mass”, as scientists call it, on Earth has doubled every 20 years for the last 100 years. Today, humans produce more than 30 billion metric tons of new material each year, from plastics to building materials, clothing, and cell phones. And if current production growth rates continue, the total weight of man-made objects could reach 2.2 trillion tons by 2040, twice that of all living biomass.
Those numbers, scientists say, include only objects in use today, not waste. If waste was added, anthropogenic mass exceeded biomass in approximately 2013.
