When was the first waste produced? The concepts of “waste” and “recycling” seem to us to designate a reality that is at least modern in our recent history. However, as long as we stop and think about it, we realize that here again, life, in its diversity, once again preceded the bipedal species that we are.
In fact, life has long mastered the art of recycling, that of decomposing organisms whose organic matter is ingested by other living organisms. What would happen if this recycling did not take place? We can imagine that what happened in the Paleozoic would happen and it is here that the idea can be conceived that the first waste in fact appeared well before the arrival of the human species. According to this perspective, waste in an ecological sense is what is produced by living things and cannot be recycled by the ecosystem in which it is found. This results in the production of material that accumulates over time and does not benefit surrounding living beings. This is the case for hydrocarbons.
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In our modern world, oil is referred to as black gold and coal is at the origin of the industrial revolution, but for millions of years, on a strictly ecological level, these materials had no use. This production began as far back as the Carboniferous, more than 300 million years ago. For at least 300 million years, ecosystems have naturally produced a type of waste that has continued to accumulate. It was not until the arrival of the human species that recycling began in the form of energy produced ready for use and today this recycling poses a problem.
Taking a different look allowing us to see that the production of waste has so far experienced an evolution as old as that dating back at least to the Carboniferous era can only serve us, in my opinion, in this awareness for us help manage them better.
