A friend of mine gave me a great book for my birthday. It was The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It looks at specific location on our planet, and what will happen when we, as a species, are gone. It was very interesting and enlightening.

For example, I didn't know that Manhattan Island, New York City, originally had 40 or more brooks and streams that crossed the island. You don't see these today, because they were buried to make the City what it is today. It takes a huge system of pumps to manage storm water runoff through the various underground manmade streams, and the pumps require constant maintenance to prevent flooding. During heavy rains, the subway tunnels fill with water anyway. Without people to mind the pumps, water would reclaim the City in short order. Bridges, without care, would weaken from freeze and thaw cycles and the elements too. In other climates, nature is already taking down abandoned buildings and towns, sometimes creating, ironically, safe migration zones for animals.

The book examines various aspects of what will happen, without humans, over the next several hundred, thousand and millions of years. It also looks at what our species has already done in relation to nature.

Although I consider myself pretty knowledgeable regarding materials, the chapter on plastics provided clarity and information I had not encountered before. It not only covered plastics in the environment, but also the general chemical make-up of plastics, and the corresponding difficulties of recycling plastics, in terms that were quite understandable. I found the quotes below especially poignant.

"'Except for a small amount that's been incinerated...," every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. It's somewhere in the environment.'"

'"...Today's amount of plastic will take hundreds of thousands of years (for nature) to consume, but, eventually, it will all biodegrade. Lignin is far more complex, and it biodegrades. It’s just a matter of waiting for evolution to catch up with the materials we are making.'"