Can I read Mind Over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives (Worldwatch Paper) on EtoBox?

Mind Over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives (Worldwatch Paper) by Gary Gardner and Payal Sampat; Jane Peterson, editor is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Mind Over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives (Worldwatch Paper) about?

Nations and businesses are discovering ways to use materials more intelligently--to provide the goods and services people want using much less wood, metal, stone, plastic, and other materials. By reducing wasteful use, and by steering production toward durable goods that are easy to reuse, remanufacture, or recycle, a few pioneering firms are recasting the role of materials in our lives. Some businesses have even shifted out of manufacturing and become purveyors of services--dramatically lowering levels of materials use. This creative trend stems from a recognition of the environmental costs of excessive materials use. A long list of environmental ills, from deforestation to species loss to climate change, are due in part to the gargantuan appetite for materials this century, especially in industrial countries. Consumption of materials in the United States has grown some 18-fold since 1900, and the average American now uses 101 kilos of materials daily. If developing countries continue to embrace the industrial-country model of materials-intensive growth, the human impact on the natural world will only become more severe and widespread. Recognizing that continued "business-as-usual

Author

Gary Gardner and Payal Sampat; Jane Peterson, editor

Publisher

Worldwatch Institute

Published

1998

Language

EN

ISBN

9781878071460

Subjects

Social Science, Economics, Nature