There is a thought I would like to share and get feed-back from.
Sustainability has become a very fashionable idea. However, when I read of this concept, it turns out always that the proponents of sutainability are talking about a short term effect.
For example : if you need fertiliser for agriculture, then for it to be sustainable, it must be re-usable within months. So we get organic farming techniques of harvesting green organic material for composting as the only 'sustainable' option.
I have often thought that, if something becomes available in the future due to improved technology, and the resource is then fully recycleable, we can regard it as sustainable, even if it is not being recycled right now.
For example : phosphorus for agricultural fertilisers is normally mined from rock phosphate deposits - essentially fossil seabird faeces. Current stocks of rock phosphate are projected to last only another 80 years. Therefore this is considered unsustainable.
However, if we consider the new world that will exist in 80 years, the possibilities for phosphorus collecting are likely to be massive. I would foresee, for example, that we will be able to genetically modify seaweeds to accumulate phosphorus. Then we can harvest and ash the seaweed to get a phosphate rich fertiliser.
Since current phosphorus tends to end up washed into the sea, would this not be a long term recycling? And is not our use of phosphorus, then sustainable, even if not at present, though becoming so only in the long term?
I would rather not end up in a semantics argument. I am talking of long term sustainability, which means new technology making a resource essentially useable indefinitely some time in the next few decades, even if it is not now.