The Industrial Revolution: Impacts on the Environment

6 min readDec 8, 2023

The Environmental Impacts of the Industrial Revolution

By Jennie Wang

The Industrial Revolution, which sparked as early as 1760 but picked up steam by the 1830s, quickly spread across the rest of the world and marked a transformative era for labor, technology, and the economy forevermore. Thanks to revolutionary technological advancements such as the spinning jenny, steam power, and the powerloom, as well as new energy sources such as coal, electricity, and petroleum, people reaped benefits such as a wider distribution of wealth and an expansive supply of food. However, despite the benefits of the Industrial Revolution marked a period of great growth in regards to inventions and technology, it triggered a detrimental impact to the environment’s air, waters, land, and inhabitants — one of the modern world’s greatest problems that our generation staggers to fix.

Life Before the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution transformed the world from an agrarian and traditional economy to a society dependent on industry and machine manufacturing, completely changing the way that communities lived and interacted with one another. In fact, before the inventions of the industrial revolution, most people lived in the rural countryside and rarely traveled outside of their villages. Most people worked as farmers who grew their own crops for themselves and their families. These subsistence farmers grew crops by hand or with the help of simple tools, rather than the large tractors and machines we may see on a farm today. Families were close-knit and depended upon each other for food and survival — because there was no industrialization yet, getting a warm meal meant growing, preparing, and cooking the food together as a team effort, rather than walking to the grocery store. Additionally, in Europe, many people also worked as artisans who made hand-crafted goods like shoes, blankets, or clothes for others to buy.

Industrialization Sparks Societal Growth

With novel ways of innovating textile production and new sources of energy, the Industrial Revolution became a period of profound economic, technological, and social change that created new opportunities for development and societal growth. For instance, because of steam power, miners could extract more coal for longer periods of time, and steam-powered boats and ships could carry goods all across the Atlantic Ocean as well as along Britain’s rivers. The factory system, which included increased division of labor, became a widely-used and efficient means of organizing production, while agricultural improvements allowed food to be distributed across the nonagricultural populations. Pushed out of their rural and agrarian spheres, people headed to cities in order to find work, acquiring new skills such as becoming machine operators or factory workers rather than craftsmen and farmers. However, the excessive burning of fossil fuels to maintain this industrialized way of life would soon have catastrophic consequences for the Earth, and environmental harm became the price to pay.

The Downfall: Global Emissions and Fossil Fuels caused by Industrialization

Industrialization may have improved ways of life for people living hundreds of years ago, but today, it is one of the biggest challenges our world faces when tackling climate change. Starting in 1830, global emissions began to rise and steadily increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with no signs of stopping, since the Industrial Revolution was powered by coal-burning. Today, weather extremes are far reaching across the globe, endangering the natural wildlife and balance of our Earth’s ecosystems. In an article by the New York Times, researchers found that emissions from heavy industry such as cement and chemical factories will become the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas pollution. This issue is only getting worse as greenhouse gas emissions are expected to reach record highs by the end of this year, a year that was also declared the hottest year ever recorded in history. Scientists say that to even have a chance at halting climate change, electricity and transportation industries must get to zero emissions. The sources of energy that industrialization depends on like coal and natural gas, as well as transportation methods like trucks, airplanes, and ships, have been heavily polluting the Earth’s atmosphere for the last hundreds of years.

Population growth coupled with rapid urbanization has also caused the planet to warm, as cities become even more crowded with new machineries and industries like textile factories and coal mining during the Industrial Revolution. Rivers and oceans began getting polluted with heavy metals and chemicals from the factories, while fossil fuels were pumped into the atmosphere at record levels. Although water pollution was common in ancient times like in Greek and Roman cities, pollution nowadays is much more detrimental thanks to heavy metals and dangerous chemicals found in many factories. For instance, the Duwamish River in Seattle, Washington became one of the most polluted rivers in the country in the 1900s, after Boeing aircraft company and the Port of Seattle dumped toxic, forever-chemicals like PCBs and PAHs into the stream.

Industrialization also led to the rise of single-use plastics and mass-production of material items, which has increased greenhouse gas emissions even more. With our planet’s natural ecosystems and resources being exploited for the sake of mass-production, the survival of many species of wildlife is at risk. Animals such as the giant panda, tiger, green sea turtle, snow leopard, and wolverine have been hit especially hard by climate change and are now considered endangered species, due to extreme weather events, melting ice caps, deforestation, and/or changing air quality.

Overall, we need to take conscious steps to be more eco-friendly and be mindful about how our energy usage ties into supporting heavy industry. Although the effects of climate change can be reversed, time is running out. The last hundreds of years have been spent ruining the world’s natural resources and environments, putting innocent lives at risk around the world and triggering extreme weather events. Here are some steps people can take to be more eco-friendly at home.

How to Combat the Effects of Industrialization At Home and be Eco-Friendly

Enforce three bins for waste at your home: trash, compost, and recycling
Go reusable or compostable whenever possible and avoid using single-use plastic (plastic forks, straws, bags, etc.)
Carpool to school/work or take public transportation instead of driving
Lower your water usage by saving water and taking shorter showers, baths, etc.
Buy local flowers, fruits, and vegetables or grow your own at home
Reduce food waste by only buying what you need
Reuse or repurpose your old/unused materials, like clothing or bags
Buy used clothing items on websites like DePop or Poshmark or go to a thrift store
Unplug unused chargers and appliances
Switch to eco-friendly products, like a reusable water bottle
Donate your used goods
Shut off your lights and turn off your computer when you’re not at home
Consider alternatives to air traveling

Sources

The Industrial Revolution: Impacts on the Environment

Written by Jennie H Wang