The term renewable resources is one that is thrown around a lot. Maybe you heard it during a dinner conversation at your friend's condo in the 18 Yorkville area. Or you read an article about it online. Whether you heard about it in passing or briefly read up on it, not everyone knows exactly what a renewable resource is. Hopefully this section of our website will inform you about renewable resources and what type of relationship renewable resources have with the environment. At the very least, it gives you a break from researching cloth diapers or whatever it is you were looking up online.

In order to understand renewable resources, it would be beneficial to know a bit about all types of resources. Just like when you need to know about all the parts when figuring out how to put together a modern glass vanity set. In the world, there are three different types of resources. Perpetual, non-renewable and renewable. Sunlight or wind are things that can not be affected by human use and are examples of perpetual resources. Non-renewable resources are natural resources that are not generated, grown, produced or used on a scale in which they can sustain their own consumption rate. They're also found to exist in a certain fixed amount or are consumed at a much faster rate than that which they are created by nature. Examples of non-renewable resources are petroleum, coal and uranium.

Now that you know about non-renewable and perpetual resources, it's time to learn a bit about renewable resources. Unlike non-renewable resources that can't replenish themselves or replenish themselves at a slow pace, renewable resources are resources that can replenish themselves through physical and biogeochemical cycles. As long as a resource can replace itself by natural processes at the same speed or a rate faster than it's being consumed by people, then it can be considered a renewable resource. Examples of this include fresh water you might see in a lake or pond near new homes in London Ontario or Houston, Texas, and commodities such as wood.

When it comes to the relationship of renewable resources and the environment, we need to be careful to not use up the renewable resources to the point they can't be used or are no longer available to us. For instance, even though fresh water is a renewable resource and is in no danger of being eradicated, the threat of pollution makes some fresh water unusable or even harmful. Which is why we need to be careful about such things as urban sprawl and irrigation. It's not hard to throw out a worn out industrial mixer and have the waste that comes out from it pollute the air. That waste might in turn seep it's way into our renewable resources.

Knowing what renewable resources are can help you better understand what we need to do to keep them thriving.