After the crap that leaves the mouths of politicians, some other gases also pollute Earth.
In recent years, the plight of pollution and its impacts on the world has seen consistent and widespread attention from the news media, environmental activists and even government officials. And when even government officials catch on, you know things are getting real.
Yet, it's not all doom and gloom, as it seems real change is afoot with the UK government announcing plans to achieve net zero by 2050, as well as the lowest coal use ever. Don’t get too thrilled, you anarchists, that’s zero pollution, not zero government.
Growing public awareness of pollution and the adoption of renewable energy sources has also skyrocketed - as a figure of speech, luckily, since real rockets burn quite a bit of fuel.
Yet, there are still a number of industries that remain a concern due to their polluting effects as well as the damage they cause to the environment.
So, in this study, we have pinpointed some of the most polluting industries and exactly what can and is being done to change them.
Top Most Polluting Industries
In reality, there is no standardized method of measuring the most polluting industries.
Therefore, what we did was analyse the five major types of pollution impacting the globe, these include water, air, light, soil and noise pollution. Visual pollution by your neighbours’ horrible choices in landscaping was not considered.
While each type of pollution causes harm, there is no doubt that air and water pollution cause the most harm to our physical health.
In fact, in 2021 alone, air pollution contributed to more than 8.7 million deaths, while water pollution contributed to 1.5 million child deaths and continues to threaten sea life on a global scale.
Therefore, the industrial pollution highlighted below focuses on these two catastrophic types of pollution: air and water.
Here is an infographic that summarises our findings on the most polluting industries globally:
1. Fuel & Energy Industry
At present, the UK and many other developed countries are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels in almost every area of life, including domestic heating, food production, manufacturing and travel. It will be a while before fossil fuels themselves go the way of the dinosaurs.
For example, as of 2021, gas was responsible for around half of all the electricity generated in the UK.
In addition, 87% of UK households use natural gas to heat their homes, typically with a gas boiler that is the current heat source in an estimated 22 million homes.
PS Most homes use a combi boiler, you can read all about the proposed gas boiler ban here.
Of course, there are major concerns about the burning of fossil fuels like natural gas, due to it being a leading cause of carbon emissions and climate change. The goal of a gas boiler should be to heat just your house and water, not the planet as a by-product.
But it's not just our climate that is suffering due to the pollution from the energy industry, our wildlife is too.
In fact, oil spills that occur semi-frequently result in the death of sea life, poisoning fish and birds and damaging the water repellency of birds. There’s no way to ignore that and to let it go like water off a duck’s back - literally.
For perspective, in 2021, 700 metric tonnes of oil were spilt.
2. Agriculture & Food Production
We've all heard about the issues with livestock and dairy production, it is not sustainable as the global population continues to grow and the demand for more and more food continually increases. Especially if we give most food to what will become our food.
In fact, the IPCC's Special Report on Climate Change and Land estimated that agriculture was directly responsible for as much as 8.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, with an additional 14.5% resulting from the change in land use.
Controlled burning for the creation of farmland is also a leading cause of CO2 emissions and removes trees that naturally remove carbon from the atmosphere. That double whammy is like firing the London Fire Brigade and giving them a lighter and a container of gas instead.
For perspective, In April alone, deforestation in the area was at 1,012.5 square km (390 square miles) – almost doubling the region of forest removed in that month last year.
3. Fashion Industry (Fast Fashion)
Fast fashion, the consumerist trend to replace your clothes in order to keep up with the latest fashion trends results in a huge amount of waste and environmental pollution. And with modern fashion trends, some visual pollution on top of it.
In fact, at present fashion production makes up 10% of the world's carbon emissions.
Not only is fast fashion a major problem, but its delivery to your home via logistics is also contributing to pollution. Apparently, delivering individual pieces of clothing to your home is less efficient than delivering a truck load to one store - who would have thought?
For instance, annually Postal Services we use are estimated to result in equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 7 million cars.
If that's not bad enough, an astonishing 85% of textiles go to the dump every year.
Energy Help Guides:
4. Food Retail
As with agriculture, the world's ever-growing population is increasing the demand for food products.
Shockingly, in the UK more food is being wasted than ever before in history at 1.9 million tonnes annually. That’s a problem much worse than your kids not eating the crusty parts of their bread.
In addition to this, pollution from food retail is plastic packaging. In fact, some research suggests that 800,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year come from retailers alone.
For perspective, this would be enough plastic to litter the whole of Greater London to a depth of 2.5cm.
Recommended reading:
5. Transport Industry
Carbon emissions from transport are responsible for around one-fifth of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Transport as a whole can be divided into commercial transport and passenger. Commercial freight is responsible for 40% of total transportation emissions, while passenger travel is responsible for 60%.
Air travel often gets a bad rap too and not surprising since the data shows that since 2010 the volume of flights has increased by around 40%. Luckily, the audible volume has gone down a bit with newer planes. It didn’t help the pollution, though.
However, compared to the land-based passenger is the main culprit of carbon emissions with air travel only accounting for 16% of emissions.
Even though there is no question that aeroplanes emit more carbon than passenger vehicles, it's important to remember that most people in the UK own a car and only a few own planes.
So in effect, you have over 70% of the population emitting 4.6 metric tons of CO2 annually.
6. Construction Industry
Some may be surprised that the construction industry is a major polluter too, but the reality is that it's responsible for around 23% of air pollution, 40% of drinking water pollution and 50% of landfill waste.
However, the main damage caused by the construction industry is by far the number of raw materials it consumes.
As highlighted by the UK Green Building Council an estimated 400 million tonnes of materials are used by the UK construction industry annually – with an estimated 100 million tonnes ending up as waste. Imagine a garbage truck dropping 25% of its garbage along its route, and you’ve got a picture of the inefficiency of the construction industry.
Even worse, the construction industry is responsible for half of all natural resource extraction globally.
