Discarded: How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate Legacy

What will remain of our plastic, cans, and other junk long after humans have vanished?

What kind of fossils will we leave, as relics into the far future? A blizzard of new objects has suddenly appeared on Earth: plastic bottles, ballpoint pens, concrete flyways, outsize chicken bones, aluminium cans, teabags, mobile phones, T-shirts. They're produced for our comfort and pleasure—then quickly discarded. The number of our constructions has exploded, to outweigh the whole living world. This new...