Before going onto clothing and construction wastes, I like to address production waste in terms decreasing recyclability across many sectors including technology that I addressed in the previous note.
As a writing instruments, the chalk and blackboard is as classic as anything else we know as classic in our world. Produced and consumed organically, except for the convenience of retaining all that has been written – barring those carved into stones and stone structures.
We then progressed into pen and paper to embark on our path of producing waste without the foresight of the changes that could one day pollute the earth with decreasing reusability.
As an example, the pen we used to write consisted of only three parts, nib, ink storage and a cap to protect nib from drying. That pen could last a long time, till such time the nib wore out and a replacement nib was found – one tenth the size of the pen used for writing. In terms of recyclability both the size and longevity mattered then. Fast forward to now, the concept of decreasing recyclability is virtually nonexistent.
That is just one example. I can extend that to many different paths that we took to arrive at today – steel cups and plates replaced by breakable glass, ceramic and paper as one example. If you like to add more please do send them as your comments.
Another type of production waste is the diversity we achieved in terms of materials used even when they were thought to be having long-term usage. If you think on those lines, you will discover hundreds of them and then, may realize that the task has not changed, like cooking food, but the materials used and energy consumed has significantly changed. By doing so, we have neither become healthier nor created an aura around us, but have produced waste that is not sustainable.
I do understand that we have expanded on the types of food we can consume, but no effort has been made to sustain the diversity while embarking on discovering diversity. It is however changing slowly, but the pace has not yet matched the pace of destruction. Hope these notes serve as some kind of pointers to explore what else can be done in terms of sustainability while we let our future generations enjoy the world the way we did, but with significantly reduced destruction.