Defining Natural Resources & their Categories
Minerals, forests, oil, and water.
What are examples of natural resources.
Released into the atmosphere during the burning and extraction of fossil fuels, trapping heat and polluting the air.
What are carbon emissions and smog?
People who take action on both an individual and a global level.
Who are people concerned about environmental issues and human rights?
Materials or substances that occur naturally in the environment.
What is a natural resource?
This occurs when harmful gases (like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from factories or power plants) mix with oxygen and water vapor in the air.
What is acid rain?
Lowering your personal footprint by conserving natural resources in daily life.
What is reducing individual consumption?
Resources that are replaced or replenished relatively quickly by natural processes. For example, forests.
What are renewable resources?
Toxic waste materials left over after separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore.
What are mine tailings?
People that have the power to influence how natural resources are harvested and traded globally.
Who are citizens and consumers?
Taking shorter showers, refusing single-use items, and turning off electronics to conserve electricity.
What are examples of reducing individual consumption?
Resources that are completely gone once they are used up, or take millions of years to naturally regenerate. For example, oil and bitumen.
What are non-renewable resources?
Radioactive byproduct materials from nuclear power generation that require careful, long-term storage.
What is nuclear waste?
Products made and traded in a way that actively supports sustainable development in developing countries.
What are fair trade products?
Choosing fair trade items to guarantee that products come from sustainable and fair sources.
What is buying ethical products?
Resources that must be used when and where they are naturally found. They do not run out, but they cannot be stored for later use in their raw form. For example, solar and wind energy.
What are flow resources?
A logging strategy where harvesters only cut down older, mature trees while leaving the rest of the ecosystem behind to grow.
What is selective cutting?
They exist to ensure workers are paid fair wages, to improve global environmental conditions, and to help reduce the worldwide wage gap.
Why are fair trade products made?
Explicitly refusing to buy, use, or visit a business/country in order to protest or force a positive change. Consumers can boycott companies that do not source their goods ethically.
What is boycotting?