Recycling. We all want to do it, we all try to do it. But do we all do it correctly?
Welcome to the Mother Earth series where we dive into how to take care of our planet. I decided this month we can start with the basic….How the heck do we recycle.
What Can be Recycled
A great resource to help you identify what can and cannot be recycle is the Waste Management’s searchable tool. I also encourage you to visit your local government’s website to understand what is accepted where you live. The items listed below are what is currently accepted in my city.
Plastic
- Plastic Containers (with necks only)
- Carton & Juice boxes
Paper
- Cereal boxes
- Cardboard boxes
- Clean pizza boxes
- Paper (brown bags, high-grade paper)
- Junk Mail
- Magazines & newspapers
Other
- Empty aerosol cans
- Aluminum cans
- Glass bottles & jars
- Tin/steel cans
Why Recycle
To get straight to the point, it reduces greenhouse gas emission. That is quite the technical sentence, Lets dig into what that means.
Some benefits of recycling are:
- conserve resources – Recycled materials are converted into new products resulting in reducing the need to create new products hence protecting natural habitats.
- reduce landfill – The U.S. produces enough trash to cover 1,000 acres of land in one year. Out of those items, about 80% could be recycles but are not.
- protect the environment – Those landfills create methane which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Also, it would save the trees! Recycling a single run of the NY times would save 75,000 trees
Is Recycling even worth it?
I am a statistic person so I am going to start by throwing some numbers your way.
Plastics
- Of the 40 million tons of plastic waste generated in the U.S. in 2021, only 5% to 6% — or about two million tons — was recycled.
- Plastic bottles take upwards of 450 years to degrade ( Think about it. Your great, great, great, great, great grandkids will be around before your coke bottle fully degrades.)
Paper
- Paper is one of the most-often recycled materials, accounting for half of the materials collected for recycling by weight.
- It had a recycling rate of 68% in 2021
Glass
- Glass is one of the most efficient materials to recycle as well as the cheapest.
- There are close to 110 million glass bottles that are thrown away each DAY in the Unites States. Out of the 110 million, only on-third end up being recycled.
Food Waste
- Did you know that food misallocation has caused food waste to be the largest category of waste?
- Out of the food produced globally, 40% of is was wasted which equates to 130 billions meals. Can you believe it? 130 BILLION meals are wasted each year. That is more than twice the number of undernourished people in the world.
What if we don’t recycle?
Pollution- Of course, there would be an increase in pollution. The Earth’s soil will absorb the chemicals from the trash which leads to cancer causing chemicals in the ground.
Growth of Landfill- The more trash we have, the more room we need for it. Enter landfills. As mentioned before, landfills create methane which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In 2021, there was only about 15 years of landfill capacity left.
Sources
www.thesca.org/connect/blog/how-recycle-and-why-you-should-do-it/
www.wasteadvantagemag.com/time-is-running-out-the-u-s-landfill-capacity-crisis/
