Discarded: How Technofossils Will Be Our Ultimate Legacy
Fossils give an important vista into our Earth’s history, but if we look to the future, what might they tell explorers about our present? In Discarded, palaeontologists Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz, speculate about which components of our throwaway world will survive for future palaeontologists to discover and then interpret.
They begin with the fact that we bury unwanted waste in landfill and dedicate several chapters to exploring the long-term fate of familiar items we produce and discard in vast quantities, such as synthetic clothing, building materials (especially concrete), electronics (including mobile phones), plus plastics, aluminium cans and even chicken bones. If buried quickly in the right conditions, particularly with oxygen deficiency, the waste might be altered over time by bacteria, heat, rain, sun, wind, corrosion, compaction, permeation by subterranean fluids and crumpling through mountain-building movements into what the authors call ‘technofossils’.
Readers are encouraged to wonder what traces of these man-made ‘technofossils’ might be found in the Earth’s layers after decades, millennia or millions of years. In particular, the hazards associated with their breakdown and how they impact wildlife, from chemical leaching releasing polluting toxins, through to components being swallowed by birds, entangling fish and altering microbial communities. There is even discussion of them creating oil and gas.
Discarded is an informed and futuristic thought-experiment drawing on modern fossil science to ponder what the ultimate legacy might be from our throwaway, maybe irresponsible, society. It broadens further into what future fossilisation processes of such household items could look like and what might be considered a ‘fossil’ in the long term. A particularly intriguing discussion is whether future generations will be able to accurately infer what these thrown-away objects were for and what they might conclude about the society that buried them. This presents a challenging, yet fascinating, new angle for anyone concerned about the long-term future of our planet.
Reviewed by Richard Dawe
DETAILS
BY: Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz (2025) Oxford University Press, 256 pp.
ISBN: 9780192869333
PRICE: £20, available from Geoscientist’s bookshop
