The mass of human weight material now outweighs the earth’s biomass for the first time ever, study says

Results show humans are doubling their mass imprint

Human production of materials such as plastic, asphalt and metal now collectively outweighs every other living organism on earth.

A study from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel estimates how human made mass has changed from 1900 to present day.

The results show that humans are doubling their mass imprint every 20 years. It also found that each of us adds more than their own body weight to the world each week.

In 2020, we hit a new record. For the first time, human mass hit about 1.1 trillion tons, exceeding the overall global biomass.

In comparison, in 1900, human-made mass only equaled about three percent of the global biomass.

As for the earth’s plant mass, The National Geographic believes humans have wiped out about half of it since the first agricultural revolution.

All land and sea creatures weigh about four billion tons and plastic alone amounts to eight billion tons.


About the Authors:

Sarah Acosta is a weekend Good Morning San Antonio anchor and a general assignments reporter at KSAT12. She joined the news team in April 2018 as a morning reporter for GMSA and is a native South Texan.

Gaby has been a news producer since 2019. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a Media Arts degree and previously worked at KIII-TV in Corpus Christi.