When we recycle, we often think about the good things that we are doing, but what if we never did them at all? If the world cared nothing about recycling and the environment, we’d be in a much worse position now, and a far worse position in the future. Would mankind be surrounded by junk, rotting food, toxic substances, old soda cans, and piles of vintage Apple IIe computers?
A world without recycling is a scary idea, if you really think about it. As the population rate increases at a rate of about 1.17%, we cannot sustain the amount of people brought into the world based on the amount of resources that the planet has. Think of it like interest on a savings account. The initial amount isn’t very much, but once it gets rolling and interest starts compunding, things really start to grow. The same can be said for population. As we grow and the growth rate remains the same, the actual number of people on the planet is going to compund tremendously in the coming years. Now, where are all of these people going to live? Well, they can’t live in that trash pile over there… or that landfill over there… or that pile of vintage Apple IIe’s over there.
What if We Didn’t Recycle?
If we didn’t recycle at all, and we stopped recycling today, the future is going to be a messy, horrible place to live. The population of the planet is beyond its peak right now, and as we continue to exceed that number, resources are going to also continue to be depleted at a negative compound rate.
Let’s just imagine the scenario:
It’s the year 2080. Once mankind gave up on recycling, it was a much more convenient way of living. That only lasted for about three years, and that’s when the new landfills had to be created to deal with the new waste. Landfills were bulldozed from forests and fields, taking up living space and wildlife habitat. As more wildlife lost its habitat, the their numbers decreased. At first, only some species were affected, but the missing piece of the food chain puzzle caused a ripple effect. Soon, population numbers of hawks, squirrels, songbirds, moose, and turtles were in decline.
The Pacific Garbage Patch
The ocean wildlife were soon affected by the increase in trash as well. When recycling stopped, it was almost a checkered racing flag for polluters to dump trash into the ocean. The Pacific Garbage Patch, which was before twice the size of the state of Texas, grew to the size of China, then to the size of the Russia. It was literally a large floating trash island that was gaining mass and depth. There was practically a trash land bridge between Asia and North America. After sitting in the water for so long, the chemicals from the plastics were leeching into the ocean.
Besides the death caused at the hands of the garbage patch, it was now affecting the wildlife in new ways – by poisoning them. Chemicals like phtalates, BPA, and tiny bits of digestable plastic made the entire ocean a thick, sludgy soup, not just the Pacific. You couldn’t swim at beaches, and fishing had long since become a part of the diet of man. With the fishing industry gone, a large segment of the world population was without food. People started dying at a faster rate than before, and the population growth rate finally slowed, and reversed.
And that’s when mankind hit rock bottom. There were no places left to fish, no beaches to swim at, and no places left to build new homes (and that’s not even including the consequences of global warming). Was it too late to undo the harm that was already done? Yes. But the good news is that mankind figured out they could stop the problem from getting any worse, just by recycling what they use, or better yet, reusing it.
Is it Too Late to Change?
There’s no fairy tale ending here, just a good lesson learned. Is it too late for us to learn this lesson today? If you read back through the hypothetical story, you’ll notice that it’s much like the conditions of today. We’re at rock bottom right now. We already have a great patch of toxic, degrading plastic junk that’s killing ocean life, we are already running out of room for homes, and the food chain has already been affected by our own trash. The scariest thing of all is that these are just a few of the consequences of not recycling.
Hearing about all of these potential and current consequences probably makes you want to change something in your life. What are you going to do change the way you live? Will you start recycling more, reusing, or buying less? Maybe you could tell someone that you know just by sharing a link. The only thing better than one person making a change is two, or five, or a dozen people instigating change. You can start by emailing this post to a friend.
Intro photo of of North Pacific Gyre Garbage (photographer unknown).