From our childhood we’ve heard about how we should recycle to help the environment, and not just soda bottles, but everything from CDs to electronics and household tools too. But how, exactly, does recycling help eliminate detrimental environmental practices, and why should we do it?
Recycling is just what it sounds like, the reuse of old objects in a cycle in which they once again become useable, and perhaps even recycled again. Recycling helps eliminate the amount of waste put into dumps and landfills where harmful chemicals, inherit in most every manufactured product (electronics and automobiles especially) can leak into the surrounding environment and pollute the land and groundwater. By recycling these toxins are in part prevented from entering the environment, in addition to reducing the space needed for garbage in landfills.
In addition, the reuse of products such as recyclable plastics prevents the need for excess production of these exact same plastics. By reducing the need for greater plastic production, the emissions released from factories is lessened in addition to the amount of plastic actually being released into the environment. Recycled products also take less energy to produce. By already being partially processed, products such as aluminum use 95% less energy to produce when made from recycled materials verses reduction and formation from its original form in bauxite ore.
Recycled materials also preserve natural resources. The use of recycled goods reduces the need for further exploitation of oils and minerals as well as land resources such as water and lumber, helping to protect the natural environment. Electronic and large appliance recycling also reduces large-scale mineral mining while conserving renewable resources preserves untouched land and parks.
Economically, recycling is also much more profitable than creating all new products from so-called ‘virgin’ materials. Because recycling is so much more involved that primary production, more jobs are needed to facilitate this process. In addition, recycling can also cost less than using landfills or incinerators. While more jobs are created, thereby putting money into the local economy, the actual process of recycling costs less to do, helping the local government to save money too.
Given the many ecological and economical benefits of recycling it’s evident that the few extra steps it may take to put your bottle in the bin rather than the can are well worth it in the long run. For the world to become environmentally neutral, the recycling of already in-use artificial compounds goes a long way towards conservation.
I am an junior English major/ Philosophy minor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Currently I am spending the spring of 2009 studying at the University College Cork in Cork, Ireland.
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Crafters tend to recycle often. Making paper from junk mail or bird feeders from plastic bottles are just two simple ways to teach recycling as a family activity.
This is very true, SageMother.
Recycle or reuse give people a break to give another life to old thing or stocks, than to throw it! one of being creative is knowing how to recycle.
We’ve heard about how we should recycle to help the environment, and not just soda bottles, but everything SHOULD TURN to GREEN”
Though it’s heavy with controversy, most people have at least heard the basic ideas of environmentalism. With so many possibilities, though, it can feel easier to just not make a choice and do nothing. The secret to truly recycling the idea of environmentalism into something that can work, though, is to just choose one thing at a time