Hazardous waste

Rubbish doesn’t disappear. We can gather it up - Good, Leon! - and take care of it, but disappear it doesn’t. Not the bigger rubbish, like packaging, worn-out clothing or broken equipment.. ..and not the smaller rubbish - the tiny particles. When we release waste gases, smoke, or chemicals - the particles will remain in nature. And they can be harmful for humans, plants, and animals, even though the particles cannot be seen.

In agriculture various pesticides are often used to keep pests away from crops. But it has been shown that some pesticides harm other animals too. Bees for example. Many bees have died. And bees spread pollen between plants, so that the plants can reproduce.

Without bees, the pollination of flowers is reduced, and crops of apples, plums, and other fruit will be much smaller. So, a pesticide used for the purpose of improving food production, instead makes it worse, since many helpful insects die. Using coal, petroleum, and diesel as fuels produces sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. When we release these into the atmosphere they can transform into acids. And when rain comes down, these acids come too.

They amass in the ground, in lakes, and in waterways. The environment becomes acidified. There are species, such as some trees, that can’t live in an acidic environment. They die. And fish find it harder to reproduce.

But there are some species that fare better when nature is more acidic. These species take over. Acidification leads therefore to a narrower range of species in nature, and upsets the ecological balance. Other substances are actively poisonous. For instance PCBs.

They were formerly used in industry for softening plastics. But PCBs have been shown to be poisonous, and they break down very slowly. Once they escape into nature, they remain there. They gather in plants, in animals, and in humans. PCBs are dangerous in many ways.

They increase the risks of cancer and of various birth defects in children. We have stopped releasing PCBs, but even so they can be found almost everywhere in the water, and in the earth. They take a very long time to disappear completely from the environment. And there are many other poisonous substances that also build up in nature without decomposing. Some of them are still being released from factories and mines around the world.

They cause sickness in humans, and damage in nature. So, we humans use pesticides.. that kill both pests and helpful insects. We burn coal and oil.. Which leads to the acidification of nature.

And we continue to release poisons.. that gather and will remain in the environment for a very long time. It is time to stop doing this, and to begin cleaning up what has already been released, as best we can. And that is a job that will last a long time.