Human-made objects to outweigh living things by the end of 2020: Study

Team Udayavani, Dec 12, 2020, 5:18 PM IST

Scientists have said that the weight of human-made objects will likely exceed that of living things by the end of the year.

In a study published in the scientific journal Nature, scientists compared the overall living biomass on Earth, estimated to be around 1.1 teratonnes, to human-made mass. “We find that Earth is exactly at the crossover point,” they said.

For every person in the world, more than their body weight in stuff is now being produced each week.

These astonishing figures have been calculated by a team at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Rehovot, Israel, to show how our species is transforming the Earth.

According to BBC, The scientists worked out the combined mass of all human-made stuff from 1900 to the present day and compared this with the weight of all the living things on the planet (known as biomass).