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1 September 2025
You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
- Jane Goodall
In 2020, scientists found that the weight of man-made materials on Earth surpassed the weight of natural biomass. They estimated that the weight of every individual on the planet is produced every week. They’re also estimating that man-made materials are going to double the weight of natural biomass by 2040.
While there are no studies yet to prove that this will throw the earth off its axis – this reveals another very obvious truth. We’re destroying the planet and all its beauty and converting all natural resources into stuff. Stuff that we eventually throw away. Stuff that is being mined from huge holes in the ground by little children. Stuff that is choking our water ways, suffocating our marine mammals, and that is now going full circle – finding its resting place inside our bodies. Stuff that is leading to the sixth mass extinction.
Man-made materials do not disappear like natural ones do. The circular economy that exists in nature is efficient. It works. Perfectly. There is no such thing as waste in a natural ecosystem. One thing eats another. The trophic system from decomposers to top predators.
In man-made systems, none of these exist.
Producers make. Consumers throw away.
This is our supposed circular economy.
This exists because of the lies that producers tell you – that their products can be recycled. That they will be reused, repurposed, and refurbished.
This is the way they get you to continually keep buying, spending money, extracting everything, in order to keep their pockets full.
We’re told that this is all for our own good.
For a healthy economy. For growth. Infinite growth.
Otherwise, there will be a recession. Otherwise, we will lose our jobs and have nothing. Otherwise, we will be homeless. Otherwise, our children will starve.
We’re threatened into consuming while they extract over 100 billion tonnes of raw materials annually. While we overshoot the thresholds of all the nine planetary boundaries. While our stuff – the stuff they say will decompose, will biodegrade, will be recycled – sits, unrecycled, whole, and polluting.
This stuff finds its way into coastal areas, into oceans, into animals, into us. It is messing up the climate. It is messing up the immaculate balance that the planet had. It is messing up the lives and health of many, many people all over the world.
The time is now not to recycle – but to refuse.
The Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and Utrecht University recently revealed that approximately 27 million tons of plastic, in the form of ultra-fine particles smaller than 1 micrometer, are currently floating in the North Atlantic Ocean.
We need to stop pretending.
We have put trash everywhere.
We swim in it, we live around it, and now we’re even eating it.
We need to rethink packaging. We need to rethink plastics.
We need to rethink the way we are treating the planet.
We need to pressure producers to take responsibility and plan for the end-of-life of all their products. We need to make a big fuss about the fact that their pay cheques are messing up our endocrine systems, killing our ecosystems, and creating an entire layer of rubbish over the entire planet.
Our ancestors left us with a spiritual connection with nature, with fuel, and with natural beauty.
We are going to be the generation to leave the future with a complete destruction of all the nine planetary boundaries, a climate thrown completely out of balance, another mass extinction, and … trash.
What I can offer, HERE.
💌 Let’s talk: change@theecochapter.com
In service of our planet,
💚 Marla Lise, Earthling at The Eco Chapter
I had never seen the weight stat before. Staggering but logical.