Population and Pollution

The human population first reached 1 billion (i.e. 1,000 million) people in 1804, roughly 5 thousand and a few hundred years from our earliest records of human writing. However it took just over a century for the global human population to gain another 1 billion people to reach a total of 2 billion people in 1927. Only thirty-three years later, the world population had gained yet another 1 billion people and by 1974 the human population reached 4 billion people.

As our population skyrockets, our society has become ever more energy intensive. People everywhere are now using more energy, more material goods, and producing more waste than ever before. The intensity of this resource extraction and waste generation is depleting mineral and energy resources globally, destroying ecosystems, and threatening the livelihood of other species and humans alike. A recent estimate indicates that on average, a US citizen generates almost 4.4 pounds of trash every day- which is 1.6 pounds (36%) more trash than Americans produced on average in 1960.
In this lab you will explore how much trash you produce daily and how much the global population has grown since your birth.

To complete the lab
Download the lab packet and be sure to complete BOTH sections 1 and 2.
Document: Week 3 Lab Packet (Word document)
Read through all sections to prepare for the lab. Note that some sections require you to collect data over multiple days. Be sure to leave enough time in the week to complete these sections.