People often keep the word ‘recycling’ beside their mouth. But, the world is the same as it is, except for the continuous increasing of rubbish and the efforts of individuals, organisations, and society to do recycling. Thus, try to imagine, what is the world will be if no recycling activities carry out.

This article is to provoke your ideas. All the content is written from the author perspective. Viewers are welcome to give comments and share ideas.

Future 1 ~ No places to live?

The Environmental Protection Agency reports the condition of US.

“The 2014 report states that residents produced 258 million short tons of municipal solid waste, with recycled and composted materials representing 34.6 percent of that amount or 89 million tons. About 33 million tons underwent combustion with energy recovery – turning the waste into usable energy for fuel, heat and electricity. A little more than half, or 136 million tons went to landfills.”

Sciencing, an academic website.

The rubbish increase very fast because most of the mankind does not cultivate the concept of ‘reduce fabricate rubbish’. That’s why activists or NGO or government support the people to get education. They believe people will become more mature with the establishment of knowledge. Moreover, the growth of population in every country also indirectly making more rubbish as the prediction assumes every individual will create rubbish.

Rubbish continues to pile up especially for those materials that cannot be decomposed in short time (e.g plasctic). When the time passed, people have no more place to dump the rubbish and they are begging for lands to live. Finally, people fight with each other for place to live. Death and war occur globally until those who survive possess enough space to live.

📍 To reach this stage, we need to make some assumptions:

the people continue to create rubbish even though: people are educated; policies on garbage disposal are strengthen; and information on Recycling is distributed by activists.
no innovation or creation to solve the overload rubbish in scientific and technologic area.

s_r01_RTR2TNVA — *People sleep on plastic waste. The picture is taken from Recycle Your City blog.*

Future 2 ~ Evolution or Disruption?

Now, you see how horrifying it is to not recycling. But, what if, this is a way of evolution?

We use the same story sequence as the first predicted future to present this idea.

The people still dumping rubbish. The piled up rubbish increase more and more until there are less land left to be lived. However, there is possibility that the landfill can expand to ‘seafill’, where rubbish is filling into the sea.

future-of-plasticrecyclingfulldeck-2-638 — *The ocean is full of rubbish. The image is taken from Slideshare website.*

Human unable to solve the ‘rubbish problem’. While there is no extra place to dump the rubbish. The scientists also did not find a way to eliminate the rubbish. Then, the solution will be to follow the old style — transport garbage to landfill. A little change is sea will be a wide place to fill with rubbish.

Nonetheless, a huge effect is covering this idea. What will the marine life become? How Earth will change? Will human lives happily ever after?

Earth is formed with plenty of water, research teaches the people about this fact a long time ago. After rubbish is accepted to fill in the sea, people live like normal. Yet, the marine life may change into another creature that no longer recognisable. Human may evolve into a better ‘human’ to adapt to the environment.

Declarations:

The idea of this article is to predict a future without recycling. Points stated in it are from a personal perspective, like mentioned at the beginning.