How can technology help to reduce waste?

ByVitor Oliveira

How can technology help to reduce waste?

According to ONU the world population will reach 8.3 billions people in 2030 with an increase of 1 billion people in 13 years. In all of the challenges of a massive increase of the population the increase of waste is one of the biggest. According to a scientific magazine “Science Advances” more than 13 billions tons of waste will be thrown at landfills and at the environment  at 2050 if the rates of waste production keep the same.

This is major issue for our Planet Earth and for our own health. With so many tons of waste being produced every day over the entire globe the employes in this industry can not keep up with every trash that enters the center, for example the Sims Municipal Recycling Facility in Brooklyn is the largest recycling facility in the USA it receives around 800 tons of recycling material every single day so with this amount of trash its normal that human employees can’t keep up with everything therefore needing help from technology.

Ok when we think about technology we think about very complex things like flying cars but in this case technology can be as simple as huge magnet to separate metal from plastic. Yes of course there are more complex of using technology for example:

In 2010 in Japan a scientist by the name Akinori Ito developed a machine that turns plastic bags into oil basically the inverse process of how plastic bags are made. This machine is so revolutionary that during the process it does not release polluting gases to the environment is totally “Green”. This invention created in 2010 is capable of transforming 1kg of plastic bags into 1l of oil and it has been already sold to 80 countries

   model of Akinori Ito machine

In my opinion in the future I thinks that this waste problem can be solved with a huge help of technology but i’m also afraid that we start to make drastic changes when its too late, we can’t only depend on technology to solve this problem we need to take measures as well. What do I mean with this? Recycling is one of the main option but not only check in your town there must be a kind of event to clean the streets, beaches. There nothing like that in your city? Why not creating your own? If we wait too much to start to do something regarding this topic it can be too late for the Earth and for us. We were given so much the only planet in the solar system with life. I mean, we are one in a million and I don’t wanna get too spiritual, but how are we not a miracle? We are perfectly positioned to the sun so we don’t burn but not too distant so we don’t turn to ice. As Richard Williams once said and I quote “Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Mankind? About 140,000 years old. Let me put that in perspective. If you condense the Earth’s lifespan into 24 hours, that’s one full day, then we have been here on this planet for… three seconds.”

Three seconds and look what have we done, we call ourselves Homo sapiens aka wise man, but are we so wise? Wisdom is different.While intelligence speaks,wisdom listens and we covered our ears to mother nature screams and closed our eyes to all her “Help Wanted” signs. One thing i’m sure only if we do this together as humans we can make it to the fourth second.