Nonrenewable Resources and Renewable Resources

Hello guys! These days, the people of the Earth depends way too much on nonrenewable resources. We need to find the alternatives for unrenewable resources. Well, as I have guess, some of you don't know what nonrenewable resources means. Read the next paragraph and you shall see.

Nonrenewable resources are resources that are being used up too fast for nature to produce more to replace the resources that are being used. For example, coal is a kind of sedimentary rock produce from compressing vegetation. Today, coal is mainly use for generating electricity, by burning coal which will produce big amounts of heat. That heat will boil water, which will turn into steam and spin a turbine. That turbine, in turn, will spin the electrical generator, which will produce electricity. Coal's use is in, well, great demand, meaning much of the world's electricity get their fuel solely from coal. Coal's a nonrenewable resource, meaning nature can't produce enough coal to replace the used coal.
Here is a list of nonrenewable resources: crude oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. We depend a lot on them, especially on Coal and Oil. Here are the rankings for how much we depend on them:
Coal and Oil: a lot
Natural gas: somewhere between a lot and medium. Probably a lot.
Nuclear power: Not so much

Why are we depending on them so much? Cause they could produce a lot of heat and some of them, like oil could be split up into it several substances, like plastic (fact: plastic's from oil), that were in great demand. We need heat for a lot of stuff: generating electricity, running our vehicles, heating or cooling our homes, making glass, DVDs, CDs, and a lot of other stuff... So now we need to shift some of our dependence on all kinds of resources away from nonrenewable resources and onto renewable resources.

Today, renewable resources are being used on a small scale compare to nonrenewable resources. Here is the list of some of our renewable resources: water, sunlight, wind, plants, waste (like sewage, leftover food, animal poop and pee...). But we are smart. We, the people, have changed the world into what we see today: from bows and arrows to tanks, military jets, helicopters, and automatic rifles. We could still change the world, if we aren't lazy or stupid.

We need to exploit the full potential of renewable resources. People have used solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. Solar panels produce too little electricity. The solution? Use mirrors to concentrate sunlight into heating a fluid, such as molten salt, that will stay hot for a long time. The fluid will be pumped away to boil water, and you know the rest. That way, much more electricity can be produce than just using solar panels. You might think "why didn't they just do that?", I think it might be the cost.

Not just utilize the renewable resources, which are much cleaner than nonrenewable resources, we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, released into the atmosphere through human activities, otherwise known as carbon footprint. There are a lot of ways to reduce your carbon footprints: use energy-efficient lighting, travel by car only when you really need to, travel less, walk or bike more, take less baths or don't take baths at all and take showers instead... These are some of the solutions for reducing your carbon footprints and use less nonrenewable resources, so they could last longer, giving renewable resources more time to be developed and used on a large scale.

What renewable resources can you get out of waste and plants? Substances for biofuels and bioplastics. Through various processes, substances from plants and waste can be extract and be made into biofuels and bioplastics. For example, sugar can be made into ethanol. Leftover food or plants will be crush into powder and mixed with water and an enzyme to break down the powder. Heat the mixture up, cooled it down to add a second enzyme, which will convert some of the powder to sugar. Add yeast to the mixture and mix them up for 48 hours or so, and sugar turns into ethanol. Filter the water and the remaining byproduct of the powder from ethanol. Literally! Filter them. The water is filtered from the ethanol by a molecular sieve, or just another form of filter. Ethanol can be used as a replacement for gasoline. Another example is biogas. Biogas can be extracted out of waste and plants. The waste and plants are crushed and mix with warm water in an air-proof tank, and several types of bacteria will be introduce to the mixture. The bacteria will release biogas through a process known as "anaerobic digestion", in which the bacteria will digest the waste and plants into biogas and another byproduct. The water helped the bacteria to produce more methane. Methane will then be extracted out of the biogas and use for generating electricity and cooking, while the byproduct, known as digestate, is used as fertilizer.

So you folks can see, renewable resources are capable of replacing nonrenewable resources. If we constantly modified the renewable resources and the processes of making biofuels, bioplastics... and use them on a large scale, the results are cleaner and greener resources that are abundant enough to replace nonrenewable resources.