Fossil Fuels

 

What will we do when the world runs out of fossil fuels?

When one thinks of fossil fuels, you think of gas for our vehicles, and that’s accurate. What people may not realize is that fossil fuels also fuel our electricity. Sure, some countries have renewable energy, but the majority do not. That includes the US, where I live and am from. America’s education system is lacking. I am the product of such, and I learn more from Tiktok, than I did in all my years of public school.

Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, I heard the phrase “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” A lot. Teachers would send recycling stickers home in our backpacks for us to paste wherever our hearts desired. It’s assumed it was meant to be stuck to things that could be recycled, because we as children were educated in school about plastics, cans and how they should never embrace the inside of that plastic lined plastic trashcan. We must put it in a separate plastic container and then put on the edge of our driveways for large diesel trucks to come down the road and grab and dump the contents of that large plastic container into a large vat. That truck will then take it to your local dump. If you’re lucky, it will be sent to a recycling center. If not, it will be dumped next to the trash that you so carefully separated the “recyclables” from, together at last.

If your recyclables are so lucky to go to a recycling center, it will be processed and bundled – to be sold. The US has sold almost all of our recycling waste to China, in which they use it in manufacturing, considering they are largely, the world’s largest manufacturing sector, and manufactures nearly 30% of the world’s products. China has since restricted imports of certain recycling materials, most plastics and paper included. So what do they do with our recyclables now?

They throw it all away.

Yes, that’s right – all of your carefully separated recyclables are being thrown in the landfill next to yesterday’s moldy lasagna.

So, what now?