15 Things That Won’t Be Around By 2040 (3 of 3)

Plastic Bags

One thing I’m sure many people will be happy about is the removal of plastic bags. These days they are causing a lot of environmental issues. Not only that, but they are a huge mess already as they are often discarded and are left to clog up streets, sidewalks, and more.

Because of these rising issues, cities and countries have started to ban these or place restrictions. While people have questioned how effective these practices are, there is still a huge push to handle these and for people to look for plastic alternatives.

Physical Banks

While we still need a bank, we might not need a physical bank. These days a good portion of us check our accounts through an app or online. It’s only once in a while do we actually go to a physical bank.

Because of these behaviours, it makes sense for banks to start closing physical branches or downsizing. Some banks can have more creativity though and reinvent their branches too.

Checkout Counters & Cashiers

Amazon is one of the biggest businesses in the world that we continue to buy from. It is the trend setter and it has ushered a world where we no longer need to go to a physical store to shop.

But whenever we go to the grocery store, we can already start to see changes in there too. Either a small or a large section of the checkout section is all self-checkout.

Because of these aspects, people can expect changes in several stores over the next few decades. After all, Amazon Go is already quite the hit and if other stores follow suit with that technology, it’s certainly possible to see this shift.

Farmers

There are a lot of farms across the globe, but as the population grows, the fields have become smaller and smaller. Between 1992 and 2012, America lost 31 million acres to development. It’s equivalent to losing most of Iowa or New York.

As more development occurs, it’s likely to see less farm land and need for farmers. Instead, we might focus on different ways to grow crops. It’s possible to imagine massive warehouses where food is grown vertically under artificial lights and harvested via robots.

Glaciers

What’s even more dangerous is the growing concern of climate change. We’ve known for years now that climate change is slowly eroding our environment. One of the reasons we turn to is looking at the glaciers, which have been melting.

At the rate that climate change is going, there is a good chance that we’ll be out of glaciers by 2040. That much is possible when you consider that Greenland has lost 12.5 billion tones of ice in a single day. Furthermore Iceland has lost their first glacier in 2019 called Okjökull.