I got really upset, angry, actually, when I heard the other day how much “space junk” is orbiting the Earth. I thought, “Great! Humans have trashed the rivers, streams, and ocean. We have polluted and degraded our landscapes. We have filled the air with toxic chemicals and particulates. And now we are trashing space. For all our ‘progress,’ we haven’t learned (expletive!).”
We live with a “throw away” mindset. Manufacturers are interested in selling us products that are designed to wear out and then be discarded, requiring replacement. As consumers, we buy, buy, buy with the idea of “throwing away” our surplus. We can “throw,” but there is no “away”. “Disposable” is a myth originating in ignorance, thoughtlessness, and convenience. The First Law of Thermodynamics, otherwise known as the “principle of conservation of matter,” states that “matter cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted to other forms of matter.” This basic truth applies to physical and chemical substances. The number of molecules stays constant even as it changes states. A given volume of water contains the same amount whether converted to ice or steam.
Worn-out household appliances are often found in the backwaters of rivers and lakes. As the metal, rubber, and paint that make up those appliances break down (changing form), the entire volume of decomposing components enters that watershed. We just polluted the waters. When you burn ten pounds of cardboard in your backyard burn barrel, the smoke and ash generated will add up to ten pounds. Imagine that as you watch the smoke lazily go skyward on a hopefully windless day. The particulates in the smoke are not “away” but will be captured in the air we breathe and the atmosphere that protects life on Earth. We just trashed it.
When we get new tires on our vehicles, we pay a “disposal fee” on the old tires. A cheap and convenient fix for us consumers. But most of the old tires are simply dumped on some marginal landscape out of sight and out of mind. Until that pile of worn-out petrochemical tires changes form when ignited by fire. Massive fires from millions of discarded tires burning for months or even years have occurred thirty-three times between 1983 and 2022. Each of these fires put the same weight of matter into our atmosphere as the weight of every tire burnt.
Dumped single-use plastics are in the news quite a bit. Plastics in the bellies of aquatic mammals, fish, and birds. Nano-particles of plastic matter are now found in our food chain, reproductive organs, and breast milk. Less considered by news media is the global pollution created by trashed clothing. Mountains of textile waste can be found in Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, and Chile. The world produces ninety-two tons of textile waste every year. Some of this “waste” still has the retail price tags on it. The mountains of wornout or unsold garments are visible from space even as space itself is being polluted.
The United States Space Command (USSPACECOM) has created a publicly available catalogue of twenty-eight thousand pieces of trackable space “debris” via spacetrack.org. Trackable trash measures four inches and larger. What is tracked weighs over ten thousand tons. Existing pieces smaller than four inches cannot be seen or tracked but still represent a significant threat to the rapidly increasing number of satellites orbiting amongst the debris field. There is growing concern that a collision in the increasingly crowded orbit could set off a chain reaction like a pinball game console that would damage our reliance on these orbiting satellites. You would think the “pinball wizards” that put a man on the moon could figure out a way to clean up their mess.
My mother taught me to pick up my own underwear and socks off the floor. If I cooked, it was my responsibility to clean up my mess. “Don’t leave your mess for someone else,” she would instruct. The knuckleheads of industrial and mining companies must have had a different mother. Instead of cleaning up their mess, they create the mess by dumping into land, water, and air, plus the planned obsolescence of what they make. Household appliances, clothing, and consumer goods used to be designed to last longer and be repairable. It seems to be more profitable to make items that wear out only to be discarded, especially if the clean-up is not the responsibility of the original manufacturer. Better design and material use would surely evolve if manufacturers were held liable for end use and cleanup.
Data centers are criticized for their consumption of water and electricity. Their use of materials for hardware is not yet under much scrutiny. Their various hardware components need replacing every three to eight years. Working components are replaced sooner if some new innovation offers something better. Electronic waste is already a global issue, so where is the emerging enormous additional volume going to be tossed?
Recycling and re-purposing, as expressions of the “principle of conservation of matter,” offer an alternative to the wasteful mindset of manufacturers and consumers. Anyone who has replaced a battery, alternator, or generator in their vehicle knows these components are recycled and rebuilt. A useful solution to parts that wear out. European appliance manufacturers increasingly design and build to allow for recycling of worn-out units. Recycling is a core practice that recognizes and takes charge of the fact that matter is neither created nor destroyed but changes form.
In my area, a tremendous amount of matter is slowly changing form while rusting in the woods. Iron and steel vehicles, logging and lumber mill equipment, agricultural and construction equipment that are broken or outdated have been dumped and abandoned in the woods and fields of NE Minnesota and all over the United States. This slow wasting of recyclable and useful material happens concurrently with continued open-pit iron ore mining to meet world demand for the very material left rotting in open air and rain.
The rare earth minerals used in modern electronics are in high demand, forcing a worldwide rush to find and mine new deposits of these substances. Northern Minnesota is a prime target for an untapped source of copper, nickel, neodymium, and other rare metals used in our electronic age. Another source for these materials is the mountainous quantities of trashed electronics piled all around the world, primarily in third-world countries. The excuse is that there is such a small amount in each unit as to make recovery impossible. Technologies have long been in place to recover invisible, microscopic gold in pyrite and arsenopyrite through an arsenic leaching process. A dump truck load of these mineral ores would yield enough gold to produce one or two wedding rings. Surely there is a way to recover the small quantity of valued materials in any component of an electronic device. The cumulative quantity of reclaimed metals is enormous given the quantity of our waste. It is economically and technologically ignorant, plus environmentally damaging, to let this resource degrade as trash.
The amount of waste we leave behind in our modern endeavor to acquire the new, latest, and greatest is more than shameful. It’s destructive to the planet and all its inhabitants. We humans imperil ourselves and our children when we operate with a throw-away mentality based on the assumption that there will always be more of anything we need or want. We cannot make or destroy matter, so we must learn to convert it with less waste and damage to the world that supports life as we know it. Could world-class businesses develop processes and find profits in using reclaimed materials rather than virgin sources? Could consumers forgo convenience, status, fashion, and thoughtless consumption to find satisfaction in the “conservation of matter” for future generations? Humans have always converted matter to new forms. Humans go through periods of converting ignorance into wisdom. Now is the time for wise conversion for the betterment of all our futures.
