Mass or energy can be changed from one form to another, but can neither be created nor be destroyed. Many years before I could learn in classrooms about the indestructibility and transformability of matter and energy the very idea was cropped up in my mind when as a kid while cycling I marvelled at the magic power of a 'bottle dynamo' that was mounted on my favourite bicycle.
As a bicycle rider I had to exert more effort to maintain a given speed when the roller of the bike-dynamo was engaged on the sidewall of my bicycle tyre. In spite of my extra strain I used to feel extremely peppy, as if I were driving a car, when the headlight of my bike continuously shed a broad sliver of light on the road at night---a magical luminance made possible without battery, a surprise made believable for my body energy to be transformed into light via the bottle-like dynamo, a great wonder of recycling powers I discovered in my childhood!
The world would have been different if the ingredients of the earth would have vanished from the surface of this planet forever. This earth would have been lifeless if water evaporated by heat would not have condensed to come back to our ecosystem. Life and death revolves on this earth like a spinning wheel. Death gives rise to a life and life to a death and again death to a life in a cyclic order.
Remains of the dead take eons of time to be transformed into a variety of minerals-some abundant and some rare-we use for all we need. The theory of conservation of mass is true to prove that death does not deprive the earth of any of its belongings, the sum total of the live and dead materials being always the same.
For billions of years, life on this earth was as usual and the rhyme of life and death was synched in perfect harmony with nature until a point of time when a group of animals called humans (more technically speaking Home Sapiens evolved from Homo Erectus) landed on this earth.
These humans did not believe in the theory of 'giving an equal amount of taking'. The humans started taking more than giving from and to the Earth. Cumulative taking has been so higher than the giving that there has already been an irrevocable imbalance in the clockwork of the nature, an imbalance that is now threatening our very survival due to severe alteration in our ecosystem causing among other damages a devastating change in our global climate.
All living beings except humans did never defy the theory of giving an equal or more amount than that of taking. A cow gives every single component of its body during and after its life to repay the debt it owes the earth, the debt being only the food it takes.
Among humans too not all humans indulge in guzzling more than bestowing from and back to the earth. People in Bangladesh are more down to earth than people in other parts of the world. Still today we Bangladeshis are tilling our lands with the help of cows or with minimum use of machines. We are still obeying the order of the Mother Nature in our mostly organic way of living.
Nevertheless, there has been a conspicuous divide between humans living in the north and humans living in the south. For more than 200 years humans of developed countries mostly living in the northern part of the globe have for industrial gains consumed and distorted natural resources many times more than what humans of the developing countries mostly living in the southern part have consumed.
Overexploitation of nature
Overexploitation of natural resources by the industrialised nations has taken a heavy toll on the earth the burden of which, as a mockery of fate, has fallen more on the developing countries than on the developed countries. The irony is the innocent like Bangladesh are paying the price for a crime committed by the guilty like America!
Ominous signs of global warming have already been palpably clear by the unusual patterns of climate and the atypical vagaries of nature. It is apprehended one-third of land of Bangladesh may be inundated if the sea level rises by only one meter. The way and by the pace the glaciers are now being melted many scientists are afraid that one-meter rise of sea level is just a matter of time and Bangladesh may be one of the worst affected countries. It is estimated that 20 million Bangladeshis would have to be relocated to safer lands by 2050 due to various climate-change impacts.
Whatever is concluded in the Geneva Climate Meet and however earnestly our Prime Minister appealed for international assistance there is going to be very little we can expect from the so-called comity of nations. We rather have to be self-reliant as usual.
We have proven many a time that we can face our natural and manmade disasters on the strength of our own resilience. Compared to many nations we are not far behind in our forestation programs as is evident by our people's enthusiasm in tree plantations during summertime.
Benefits of recycling
A few facts about how recklessly we are wasting our resources may open our eyes to the benefits of recycling our energy, water, paper, glass, steel, plastic, food, garbage, rubbers and a plethora of other miscellaneous products.
About 75 percent of the water we use in our homes is used in the bathroom. Letting our tap run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours. Leaky faucets that drip at the rate of one drop per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons of water each year.
At most, 35 per cent of coal's energy in a power plant converts to electricity. The remaining two-thirds is lost as waste heat, benefiting no one and often harming surrounding ecosystems.
Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Recycling paper instead of making it from new material generates 74 percent less air pollution, uses 40 percent less energy and 50 percent less water.
Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours and recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to produce them.
Glass never wears out-it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled-1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar.
Every time a ton of steel is recycled, 2500 pounds of iron ore, 1000 pounds of coal and 40 pounds of limestone are preserved.
Need for giant dynamos
We have to find ways to make giant dynamos---much bigger than the 'bottle dynamo' that was mounted on my childhood bicycle---that can generate huge amount of electricity enough to meet the total demand of power in Bangladesh without necessitating any battery or any fossil fuel. Perhaps nuclear energy is the right answer to spin those Herculean dynamos or those nuclear reactors with no dependence on fossil fuels.
Driving a hybrid car instead of a normal gasoline-dependent car is touted as another novel solution to save our natural resources and costs. A hybrid car having two motors-one electric motor and one gasoline-powered motor-is equipped with a fuel efficient system that recycles spent energy wherever found during its runtime the way the 'bottle dynamo' captures human energy spent in bicycling. The hybrid system captures even braking energy to store in an onboard battery.
Many in Bangladesh were enthusiastic to buy new hybrid cars for lesser import duty, which is not more than 75 percent including VAT; but enthusiasm for hybrid cars must have been dampened after publication of a recent report that the hybrid car's electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals which are acutely in short supply.
With a view to offsetting the negative impacts of the climate change our government must offer incentives that should motivate both our producers and consumers to go for enhanced recycling of all consumable items without any delay.
Maswood Alam Khan is a banker. His e-address: maswood@hotmail.com
