From time to time, I read in newspapers and on the Internet about global problem of environment pollution. It manifests itself in the contamination of soil, water and air by waste and poisonous substances produced by man. While the number of people living on Earth is growing, so does the consumption, and as a result the mount of waste with a long-term decomposition process. An average European throws every year almost 500 kg of waste! Data from 2014 indicate the amount of 475 kg per year. In Poland the situation is much better, because statistic surveys show that Poles throw away less than 280kg of waste per year. This means that other countries throw away every year two or three times more waste. In the US, the average American throws away over 800kg of garbage, and on the other hemisphere, Japanese reached the number of 1000kg per year!
And we should ask ourselves what kind of waste we could find on landfills. Statistical surveys concern mainly municipal waste. Meanwhile, production and service plants produce waste related to the production process. There are also toxic substances and materials with a very long time of disintegration into basic elements. Watching one of nature TV shows, I’ve found out that on the oceans there are floating entire islands of plastic waste, including PET bottles thrown from ships or directly from land to the sea. In the Pacific Ocean, between the coast of Chile and Easter Island, there is an unimaginable spot of garbage of the area of nearly 1,000,000 square kilometres, which is more than 3 times the size of Poland!
The largest cluster of plastic garbage on our planet is floating on the North Pacific, between California and Hawaii. A similar one is located between Hawaii and Japan. The amount of garbage drifting in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean is estimated to be 100 million tonnes. They are drifting on the open ocean near the surface, whereas in the coastal areas – from the surface to the bottom. They block the digestive system and cause every year death of over 100,000 deaths of marine mammals and 1,000,000 deaths of birds.
In a funny story entitled “Recycling” I show the coexistence of species. However, the increase in animal intelligence wasn’t the only motivation for writing this story. As I had written before, there is a deeper meaning, much more serious problem that concerns people. Somewhere in an undefined past, the control over the environment was lost and a virus that killed most of humanity was born. At the same time the virus influenced the mutation of mammals, increasing their intelligence and allowing them to achieve a higher level of development. Perhaps we are at the edge of a new era of evolution without being aware of it yet. Perhaps bacteria and viruses created somewhere in toxic waste, will start to affect genetic code of fish, birds and mammals, including primates? Perhaps our present reality is the past from my story? I hope not.