Hyderabad: The recently-released Circularity Gap report 2019 has warned that due to population and economic growth, 92 billion tonnes of raw materials are being extracted every year. It further highlights that if this rapid extraction continues, this can even reach up to 184 billion tonnes per year by 2050.
According to material flow analysis, the global extraction of biotic and abiotic materials increased by 240 per cent in past 47 years.
Environmentalists say that the common raw materials which are extensively extracted by the industries are biomass, minerals, fossil fuels, and metals. An observation from the year 1970 to 2017 showed that the consumption of these resources have increased remarkably.
Researchers said that the reason behind this brisk consumption was the reliability on minerals which played a major role in order to meet the demand of ongoing infrastructure in energy, transport and construction work globally.
The report revealed that in order to meet the demands of global energy, fossil fuels witnessed a growth by over 142 per cent whereas infrastructural metal demand saw a three-fold jump in its consumption.
Biomass accounted for more than 167 per cent which was largely due to the industrialization of agriculture and forestry to generate grains for the growing population and biomass production for industrial purposes.
The geographical distribution of the extraction showed that the Asian nations witnessed the highest number of extraction between 1970 to 2017.
