From The Daily Mail:
The amount of stuff Britain consumes has fallen by around a third in just over a decade as the world became increasingly digitised, new statistics have revealed.
The figures, from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), show that the average Britain used just over ten tonnes of stuff in 2013, compared to 15 tonnes of material in 2001. The measure, which includes food, fuels, metals and building materials, shows that Britain may have passed 'peak stuff', a term relating to how much material people use.
Just goes to show, doesn't it? I have no idea whether it really is true, but it seems perfectly plausible.
Sunday Funnies...
7 minutes ago
6 comments:
Excludes net imports but I doubt that our trade deficit in goods has deteriorated badly enough to cancel this out...
I could believe a slight reduction in moving from CD and books etc to digital but a 33% reduction seems quite a lot.
Especially as it does include fuels and I don't think people travel that much less than before.
M, we could make a load of adjustments plus and minus, you can't guess the answer, somebody has to somehow measure it.
LF, but modern TVs only use a quarter as much material, cars are much more fuel efficient, gadgets are smaller etc. Yes, one third seems like a surprising amount but for the sake of argument, I will take their word for it.
Don't modern TV's last longer? I bought one in 2002 and it lasted to 2015. My first flat screen lasted for about 3 years.
LF, that's just one of myriads of things you have to adjust for - stuff lasting longer vs materials used. Old dial telephones lasted for ever, of course, but used more material (by weight, not value) than a whizzy mobile phone, but people seem to discard these after two or three years to get something even newer and whizzier. Whether overall that is a net increase or decrease in weight of goods bought I have no idea.
"Old dial telephones lasted for ever, of course,"
What surprises me is how cordless phones, which have no moving parts, if you don't count the buttons, still start to malfunction after ten years or so as if the electronics were wearing out.
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