St Andrews Sustainable Development and Environmental Economics

Insectageddon  Source: Pietrowski, A. , 2016. A recent study has found that the rate of insect population decline is worse than originally thought, leading to the declaration that we are facing an insect armageddon . The insect population was shown to have declined by a frightening 76% since 1989, and this was in a nature reserve. This is a problem because insects provide humans with valuable ecosystem services such as pollination, medicine, decomposition, population and pest control, aesthetic pleasure, cultural value, and food. Declining population levels thus pose a significant threat to humans, not to mention thousands upon thousands of other reliant species. Without insects, entire ecosystems risk collapse and our food supply would be all but gone.   Anthropogenic impacts on the environment are the reason for the crisis, particularly the increased use of pesticides in agriculture, which has itself expanded to account for 37.5% of the world’s

Plastic pollution is a growing concern for the environment, as more than eight million tons of plastic is released into the oceans every year (Plastic Oceans, 2017). In 2013, the amount of plastic pollution measured in the world’s oceans was estimated to 5.25 trillion particles, weighing 268,940 tons, severely harming the marine life as well as humans . Scientists forecast that the oceans will contain relatively more plastic than fish by weight within the next three decades (Eriksen et al. 2014). While there are countless contributors, supermarkets are responsible for a large part of the plastic pollution on the planet   (Laville, 2017), as nearly two thirds of total packaging waste by volume derives from that of food (Marsh & Bususu, 2007).      Consumption of packaging continues to increase (Verghese, Lewis and Fitzpatrick, 2012) and plastic has become a popular choice due to its low costs of production, beneficial properties and inexistent disposal costs (