Every year in Europe, soils covering an area larger than the city of Berlin are lost to urban sprawl and transport infrastructure. Soil sealing (its permanent covering with impermeable layers of buildings, asphalt roads, parking lots and so on) causes an irreversible loss of the ecological functions of soil.

Between 1990 and 2000, at least 275 hectares of soil were lost per day in the EU, amounting to 1,000 km² per year, with half of this soil being sealed by layers of concrete and asphalt. This effectively means that every ten years an area the size of Cyprus is paved over.*