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Earths Resources earth's_resources - Coggle Diagram
Earths Resources 
Finite VS Renewable
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Over history we have used lots of finite resources such as coal and oil, now we are changing to use wind, solar and other power sources.
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Life Cycle Assessment
This is a set of tests to see how eco friendly a product is, there are 4 checks
Extraction
This is looking in how the materials are being extracted or made, so plastic using oil to make it.
Production
This is about the energy consumption making it, so plastic needs 2,540 giga joules. It also looks into what is made to make, so plastic has polymers made which can cause cancer.
Usage
This talks of how long they can be used for and how durable they are, so plastic is waterproof and can be used multiple times.
Disposing
This is about how we get rid of the product and what effect that has on the environment, so plastic has to be put in landfill and can release deadly chemicals.
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Negatives
There are problems with these assessments, the main problem is they are easily manipulated to give a certain picture. This is because there are a lot of things to be worked out, this also makes it hard to spot the edited facts.
Water supply
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Treating water
In the UK and many HIC's we treat water so that it is portable (safe to drink) this is how we do it.
Step 1:
The water is forced through grids to remove any large objects, such as cars and rags.
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Step 2
In this tank solid sediments settle at the top and are moved into the middle before being removed from the water, the liquid left over is called effluent.
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Step 3
In this tank useful bacteria is pumped in with lots of O2 to kill deadly micro-organisms and any remaing solids, this can take days or hours.
Step 4
This allows the bacteria to settle at the bottom as sediment, this is either used for cleaing the sludge or step 3 again. This water is now portable, but if water is going into senstive ecosystems it will ahve Cholrine put in it or have it fed through sand
Metal Extraction
As pure metal ores become more rare and harder to extract we have come up with two ways to of retriving the metal from sludge and low grade supplies.
Boi Leaching
Step 1: Find low grade copper supply, and add bacteria to the sludge
Step 2: Through a combination of boilogical and chemical processes a solution of copper ions (leachate) from the sludge.
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About 20% of copper comes from Boi Leaching, but it should increase as supply of high grade ore supplies run out. The main problem however is the time it takes as it can take a year to extract 50% of copper.
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Phytomining
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Step 2: The plants absorb the ions and store them inside an to relase the ions you then burn the plants and the ions are obtained from the ash
Step 3: The copper ions can be leached (disolved) from the ash using sulfric acid. This makes a solution of copper ions leachate.
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The three R's
Reduce
This the simple act of decreasing the amount we use could have a major efect as we will need less of the rescoures in computers and in other resources expensive products.
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Reuse
This is when we use an item more than once this can help with decreasing the need of resources as we use less of them up producing equipment.
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Recyle
This is when we reclaim old gadets and other products and we salvage many materails from these, this will also drasticly reduce our need for more metals.
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