The Earth’s ‘technosphere’ now weighs 30 trillion tons, according to researchers from the University of Leicester, who led an international geological investigation into the scale of humanity’s creations.

The technosphere is made up of all of the structures that humans have constructed to keep ourselves alive on the planet – from houses, factories and farm machinery to computers, smartphones and landfill sites.
 
Reporting in the journal The Anthropocene Review (which takes the viewpoint that humanity is now the dominant force on the planet, and through climate change, engineering projects and land use change has ushered in a new geological age), Professors Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams and Colin Waters from the University’s Department of Geology said humans’ creations that will leave ‘technofossils’ - traces of our presence on the planet - now outnumber those of plant and animal species.  

Professor Zalasiewicz explained, “The technosphere is the brainchild of the USA scientist Peter Haff… It is all of the structures that humans have constructed to keep them alive, in very large numbers now, on the planet: houses, factories, farms, mines, roads, airports and shipping ports, computer systems, together with its discarded waste.
 
“Humans and human organisations form part of it, too – although we are not always as much in control as we think we are, as the technosphere is a system, with its own dynamics and energy flows – and humans have to help keep it going to survive.”
 
Professor Williams added, “The technosphere can be said to have budded off the biosphere [the natural world] and arguably is now at least partly parasitic on it.

“Compared with the biosphere… it is remarkably poor at recycling its own materials, as our burgeoning landfill sites show. This might be a barrier to its further success – or halt it altogether.”
 
In line with their reporting in the Anthropocene Review, the researchers believe the technosphere is some measure of the extent to which we have reshaped our planet.
 
Prof Waters said, “There is more to the technosphere than just its mass. It has enabled the production of an enormous array of material objects, from simple tools and coins, to ballpoint pens, books and CDs, to the most sophisticated computers and smartphones. Many of these… can be preserved into the distant geological future as ‘technofossils’ that will help characterize and date the Anthropocene.”
 
If technofossils were to be classified as palaeontologists classify normal fossils - based on their shape, form and texture – the study suggests that the number of individual types of ‘technofossil’ now on the planet likely reaches a billion or more – far outnumbering the numbers of biotic species now living.