If you’re looking for a way to contribute to the future of this planet, get involved in recycling. No, I’m not talking about going door-to-door collecting cans and bottles.
I’m talking about gathering stuff that you’re going to get rid of anyway — from your home, from where you work and from where you travel.
Recycling is the process of turning one product’s useful parts into a new product. This is done to conserve on the consumption of resources, energy and space used in landfills.
The evidence is over-whelming: Recycling pays dividends to future generations.
Recycling creates 1.1 million U.S. jobs, $236 billion in gross annual sales and $37 billion in annual payrolls. It creates four jobs for every one job created in the waste management and disposal industries. And recycling and composting diverted nearly 70 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2000, up from 34 million tons in 1990-doubling in just 10 years.
Recycling benefits the air and water by creating a net reduction in 10 major categories of air pollutants and eight major categories of water pollutants.
Here are some of the things you can recycle:
Paper — newspaper, office paper, cardboard, magazines
Why recycle paper? If everyone in the US recycled just 1/10th of their newsprint, it would save approximately 25 million trees a year! Every ton of paper that is recycled saves 17 trees.
Aluminum — beverage containers, canned foods containers
Why recycle aluminum? By recycling one aluminum can, you can save enough energy to run a TV set for 3 hours.
Plastics — soda bottles, milk jugs, plastic bags (at grocery stores), detergent containers.
Why recycle plastic? Five recycled plastic bottles makes enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket. By recycling one plastic bottle not only saves anywhere from 100 to 1000 years in the landfill but also saves the environment from the emissions in producing new bottles as well as the oil used to produce that bottle.
Glass — green, clear, amber.
Why recycle glass? Glass never wears out. For every ton of glass that is recycled, a ton of resources (sand, soda ash, limestone, and feldspar) is saved. The energy we save when we recycle one glass bottle is enough to light a light bulb for four hours.
Other metals — steel cans, automobile bodies, appliances
Why recycle steel? For every ton of steel that is recycled, 2500 pounds of iron ore, 1000 pounds of coal, and 40 pounds of limestone is preserved.
According to "The Benefits of Recycling," by Michael Russell, ezinearticles.com, August 20, 2009, "In 2000, the recycling industry was responsible for more than 1.1 million jobs and a yearly payroll of $37 billion. For every 10,000 tons of waste that is recycled, 36 new jobs are created. If you were to incinerate the 10,000 tons of waste instead, only one job would be created. In addition, for every employee there is collecting items that can be recycled, there are 26 employees that turn these items into new products. There are as many employees in the recycling industry as there are in the automobile and truck manufacturing industry. Also recycling industry employees make more money than employees in other industries."
Roger Rochat reminds us, "We have not inherited the earth from our grand parents, we have borrowed it from our grand children."
Care for your planet so that it will still be vibrantly giving to generations when you and I are long since forgotten. Mother Earth has been good to us, we see her assets in our gardens. This is our chance to give back to her.
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