Sustainability in Surrey ?

Industry in Surrey

Mineral Extractions
There are extractions of sand and gravel in the Thames valley and at Buckland near Reigate. Also Fuller's Earth near Redhill (?) .As far as I know these are Surrey's only contributions to this aspect of the world economy.

Manufacture
Long ago, Surrey had a primitive iron industry, based on local iron ore and the copious wood available for charcoal making. This later developed into a successful engineering industry in Dorking and other towns, and there are still some activities connected with Formula 1 racing in Woking. Dennis fire engines are produced in Guildford.

However, it would be fair to estimate that Surrey produces manufactured products and components with a value of only 1% of the products consumed in Surrey.

If Surrey were a country, its 'balance of payments' would be massively negative

Britain as a whole was once "the workshops of the world". This is long in the past, and we now have a national dilemma - we can compete technically, but we cannot compete with wage rates in the developing countries, and globalisation forces us to open our borders to products which undercut our own industries. This also may not be a sustainable situation.

In Surrey, we have:

• 1.06 million people
• 0.52 cars/person (550,000 total)
• the cars use 350,000 tons petrol
• we use 700,000+ tons of oil for domestic and business (gas, electric, coal, etc.)
  
• our agriculture grows an estimated 1% of the food consumed
• our industries produce an estimated 1% of products used
• we produce 580,000 tons of household waste a year plus more waste from shops, offices, etc
• about 18% is recycled
• we produce 580,000 tons sewage
• we use 58 million tons water
• we have about 12 million trees