Think Green! – Why Recycle?
Everyone seems to be doing it, you see those little green or blue bins and bags everywhere, but really, what’s it all for? Recycling seems to have become a routine practice and a household word, but what are we really proving by recycling?
We wanted to share with you a little bit of the “why” of recycling, keep reading for some great tips on how a few little things can go a very long way in the world of conservation.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, For What?
Employment
Recycling creates jobs. For every 15,000 tons of garbage that is recycled, 9 jobs are created. For every 15,000 tons of garbage that is tossed into a landfill, only 1 job is created.
Have you seen the price at the pump lately?
Recycling one ton of aluminum saves 37 barrels of oil. Recycling one 12 oz. aluminum can saves an amount of energy equal to 6 oz of gasoline. This could power a fuel efficient car for 6 miles!
What would you do with an extra $100? What about $1000? What about $10,000?
Think about it, energy (gas, electricity, water, coal, etc.) costs quite a bit of cash. Why are heating bills so high in the winter time? It’s basic supply and demand. It’s hard to believe, but energy actually needs to be made, when it’s cold, more people need and want energy and the demand increases. More of it has to be made, and if there’s not enough of it to go around??? Blackout. I’m sure this has happened to a few of us. If we conserve energy, not only do we save some extra money but we also have enough of it (energy) for when we really are going to need it. Energy is conserved significantly when items are recycled rather than created from raw materials. Manufacturing an aluminum can from recycled materials will use only 26% of the energy used to produce a can from scratch.
Breathe deeply, biology 101
Humans breathe oxygen and we exhale carbon dioxide. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. The more trees we have, the better we breathe. Every Sunday, the United States throws away almost 90% of our newspapers. It takes about 500,000 trees to make the paper for only one day worth of newspapers. 1 ton of recycled paper saves 3700 pounds of lumber. In one year, the paper discarded in US offices could build a 12-foot high wall of paper that reaches from New York to Los Angeles. If everyone in the United States would recycle only 1/10 of the newsprint they purchase, 25 million trees would be saved each year.
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