If you don’t know why it’s important to recycle then you are in the right place. For many of us, we never see what happens to our garbage after it leaves our home and so it becomes out of sight out of mind.
So why is it important to recycle? Recycling is an act of preservation. To avoid taking more from the environment to produce things we want. Recycling lets us waste less, reuse existing materials, protect nature, save money, and even create jobs. Protecting our planet by recycling is something we all need to take part in.
So how can we go about this? For some people it’s harder than others, it’s true, but we can all do our share to help the planet together.
What are the benefits of recycling?
Environment flourishes
When we recycle, we reduce the need to invade nature. We end up stripping fewer forests to make way for factories, farms, and production centers, leaving nature and its inhabitants free to enjoy the fruits of a natural environment. This, in turn, leads to larger amounts of oxygen-producing, carbon dioxide-consuming forests, helping everyone and combatting climate change.
Use fewer resources
More and more of the world’s resources are becoming harder to obtain and as a result, we are causing more damage to the planet in search of fresh opportunities.
When we choose to recycle we are reducing the demand for resource hunting so we can reduce the harmful effects of mining, deforestation, etc.
Recycling cardboard and paper can reduce our need for deforestation to obtain the wood needed to produce them. If we recycle plastic it stops it from ending up in toxic landfills where it will slowly break down over many hundreds of years. It will also reduce our reliance on oil as plastic and its derivatives are made from petrochemicals and are therefore very bad for the environment.
Metals can, for the most part, be recycled easily by melting them down and removing any impurities while glass can easily be ground down, reheated, and made into more glass, an almost unlimited amount of times eliminating our need for sand which is surprisingly in a short supply globally.
Carbon emissions
When we recycle the process of breaking down materials and then using those materials to produce new items often creates fewer emissions than obtaining materials from scratch. You no longer need to create emissions searching and mining, you no longer need as much transport, especially international transport like shipping.
The manufacturing process is often cleaner as there are fewer impurities that need to be removed as you are recycling a similar item to that which you are producing.
We also end up burning less of our garbage and waste, many places around the world are densely populated and as such cannot accommodate an unlimited number of landfills and so vast amounts of incineration are needed to keep everything contained and sanitary.
Energy Saving
Quite often the energy used to produce a recycled item correlates with the carbon emission in that you are breaking down an old item to produce a new item of the same variety, ie. old glass bottles to make new glass bottles. The process will be much faster and energy-efficient as you are already starting with glass as your raw material rather than sand
Saves Money
Recycling is a money saver all round. Firstly, manufacturers save money because they have supplies of materials locally and so need to spend less on transport and new, high-cost materials. They also save on production costs as they need to process the material less than base materials.
Secondly, the consumer saves money because many manufacturers pass on some of those savings to encourage loyalty and also some recycling centers pay you for your recycling so you can put some of those hard-earned pennies back in your pocket where they belong.
Creates jobs
Recycling does not happen without the multitudes of workers all doing their part to help us be greener together. Many recycling centers employ workers to sort, collect, drive and deliver our recycling for us.
Creates a community
As humans, we love to do good things and be recognized for them and recycling is no exception. It’s widely accepted as a means of doing good in the world so it often comes with that sense of pride and happiness that a positive achievement brings.
Creates awareness and educates
Many of us, as mentioned, are not aware of the impacts that our innocently purchased items bring so it’s not only important that we do our share of recycling but that we share our experiences and good feelings with others so they can learn and understand the benefits of recycling and the ramifications of not doing so as well.
As future generations come into his world they need to be aware of our past failings and our future endeavors to correct those failings. By understanding that, they are not only inheriting a stumbling, dirty move into modern-day life but that they are inheriting all of today’s modern marvels, they will take up the mantle and keep up our recycling practices for generations to come.