In certain circles, recycling is disparaged as a lost cause and an inconsequential activity to the environment. Of course, the cliques who challenge the usefulness of recycling are also the same interests, in general, who profit from doing business with unrestrained scorn for the environment. Just what is recycling and how critical is it to the environment and to all of us? Let's review some important recycling facts, after we define recycling.
"Recycling involves processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials."
Recycling is definitely necessary to help protect our environment. It functions to decrease the emission of toxic gases by moderating the pile of waste burned and by trimming down gasoline being used to produce raw materials. Indeed, it reduces the necessity for fresh materials as old ones are re-utilized for manufacturing.
Recycling facts about plastic
In 1862, plastic was recognized as a convenient and revolutionary invention at the London World's Fair. Since then, however, our view pertaining to plastic has sustained a drastic switch. It is now regarded to be a great pollutant owing to its strength, it takes a very long time to utterly decompose plastic. The plastic garbage thrown in our landfills or gathered in the world's oceans, will be there long after our era is gone.
All types of plastics can be recycled, it's amazing why the majority of us don't recycle. A promising new technique has appeared recently that could feed more incentive for us to recycle plastic waste. A company in Washington, D.C. called Envion, has recently announced the opening of its new recycling facility that could take in all plastic trash and change these into a fuel component. Hopefully, this will serve as publicized - it could prove to be the quick fix to the world's plastic pollution dilemma.
Recycling plastics save double energy compared to burning these in an incinerator.
Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's believed to be double the size of Texas and contains as much as 100 million tons of plastic waste. Through a process known as photodegradation, the plastic in this area is breaking down into shrapnel-like pieces and are consumed by fish and other sea organisms, which we consume - the plastic we nonchalantly discarded has returned by way of the food chain to haunt us all.
Recycling facts about paper
Thanks to the Digital Age, old newspapers are now using less paper to print their Sunday issues. As increasingly more readers go to online sites to read the news, old franchises like The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle are now compelled to provide online editions or risk becoming inconsequential.
Here's the wasteful truth about the newspaper and swanky magazine you buy every weekend: half a million trees we're hewn down to manufacture the paper required for the Sunday edition of all news journals in this country.
If you have a Mac in your house connected to the internet, please cancel ALL subscriptions to physical edition of your broadsheet or favorite magazine. If only 10 percent of news journals bought and discarded in the US is turned in for recycling, that's equivalent to preventing the destruction of 25,000,000 trees yearly.
Recycling facts about metal
Are you aware of the viral film showing aluminum cans? It's surprising how we waste this valuable metal by not recycling. The number of aluminum containers we landfill yearly is said to be enough to re-manufacture all the passenger and frieght aircraft in this country three times a year!
Each year, Americans require about 80 billion pieces of aluminum soda cans, and most of these are dumped in our landfills.
Recycling 1 aluminum soda container is equivalent to storing power that's enough to run a 100-watt bulb for twenty hours, run a desktop for 3 hours, or eyeball Miley Cyrus on TV for three hours.
You can research more recycling facts on the web and at school. You may also interview your town's sanitation executive to gather more specific recycling numbers. Recycling is in truth a critical part in our common effort to defend the environment and make our world a better and wonderful place to live in. Let's recycle.
Michael Arms writes about recycling facts and other topics for the Pacebutler Recycling Blog. Pacebutler Corporation is a U.S. cell phone trading company - you may sell, recycle, or donate cell phones to your favorite charity through Pacebutler.