The impacts from waste products and our nonrenewable resources of energy have an impact on the biological diversity or health of the environment, in many ways. The food waste is thrown away and makes it into landfills it rots and creates methane gases. These methane gases create a “potent greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide” ,according to the EPA(2013). The positive side of food waste if properly recycled is can be turned into compost and help improve soil by increasing the drought resistance and reducing the need for additional fertilizers and pesticides. By reducing the need for pesticides, one would be helping reduce the effects that these dangerous chemicals can have on humans and the environment. Although intended to be good, pesticides have been linked to multiple health problems such as headaches, dizziness, systemic poisoning and sometimes even cancer. These are just the effects on human life, the effects on the environment include air pollution, killing of actual beneficial insects such as worms for the soil and reducing vital nutrients for soil such as nitrogen and phosphorus (“Toxic Action Center”, 2012). The impacts from pesticides and food waste are dangerous to the environment, but they do not compare to the impacts from the mining and use of coal. Coal mining can is responsible for destroying very large areas of land and even the removal of whole mountaintops. After the mining is complete, there is no more top soil and rain water seeps down to the sulfide minerals and create acid mine drainage that can seep into nearby streams (Berg and Hager 2009, pg. 420).
Once the coal is mined, it is taken to plants to be burned for energy. During this process, dangerous pollutants are released into the air along with dangerous levels of CO2 that can create greenhouse gases, which can increase global temperature.