Importance of Recycling and Why Should We Recycle

Recycling is important in today’s world if we want to leave this planet for our future generations. It is good for the environment since we are making new products from the old products which are of no use to us. Recycling begins at home. If you are not throwing away any of your old products and instead utilizing it for something new, then you are actually recycling.

When you think of recycling, you should really think about the whole idea; reduce, reuse and recycle. We’ve been careless up to this point with the way we’ve treated the Earth, and it’s time to change, not just the way we do things but the way we think.

"Recycling, packaging, businesses are changing all of those things because that’s what consumers want" - Jerry Greenfield, Co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream

United States Environmental Protection Agency, defines recycling as, “Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. Recycling can benefit your community and the environment.”

We Should Recycle Because Recycling:

• Helps in keeping the environment clean
• Reduces the amount of waste produced
• Helps in the conservation of many non-renewable resources
• Saves energy and thus helps in avoiding energy crisis
• Prevents landfills and incinerators from getting extremely overloaded
• Saves and protects the economy of a household
• Helps in creating new job opportunities
• Restrains the hunt for raw materials

Recycling is good for the environment; in a sense, we are using old and waste products that are of no use and then converting them back to the same new products. Since we are saving resources and are sending less trash to the landfills, it helps in reducing air and water pollution.

With each passing day, the population is increasing. With that, the quantity of waste so produced is also increasing manifolds. The more the waste production, the more is the amount of space required to dump these wastes. Now, it must be remembered that the space available on earth is very limited, and it is obviously up to us to use it judiciously.

The ever-growing population needs space to live and also to grow what they eat by means of agriculture. If all this space were to be taken up by dumpsters and landfills, the survival of humankind on this planet would be really difficult. Recycling solves this problem because, with recycling, a lesser amount of wastes is dumped, and some valuable space is saved.

In recent years, incinerators are being used extensively to reduce the amount of waste produced. Incinerators burn the wastes that it takes up lesser space when being disposed of. But what are these incinerators powered with? Also referred to as the thermal treatment of wastes, incinerators use up our precious, non-renewable fossil fuels to burn wastes into ashes.
 

We are producing and losing precious energy just for the sake of a little less space used up by waste. Not only that, but we are also causing severe air pollution as well.

Energy saving is important if we are to reduce the future effects of global warming. If we recycle one aluminium can, we can save enough energy to run a TV for around 3 hours. This will obviously depend on the energy consumption of your TV, but it gives you a great idea as to just how much energy can be saved during the process of recycling products.

It is believed that (the U.S.) cut approximately 40 million newspapers each day, leading to the equivalent of about half a million trees ending in landfills every week. We’ve been careless up to this point with the way we’ve treated the Earth, and it’s time to change, not just the way we do things but the way we think. Paper, plastic, glass,aluminium cans are examples of some products that are recycled in large quantities.

Recycling serves 2 purposes:

First, it avoids landfills and helps in reducing air and water pollution, and

Secondly, valuable materials like aluminum cans, plastic and glass are reused in other forms and not wasted.

Be mindful of what you do, pay attention to the items you buy and always check yourself to see if you really need it or if it comes in a package with less waste. We can all do our part, and we will make a huge difference.

Saving energy also helps us in preventing the looming energy crisis that threatens to harm our socio-economic conditions. It is detrimental to the growth of any country. Recycling helps in preventing all these crises. It not only saves energy and promotes the judicious use of our precious fossil fuels, but it also promotes international socio-political peace.

It is the energy crisis that regulates fuel prices. The lesser the crisis, the more viable is the price of fuel. It ensures the affordability of fuels. Thus in every possible way, recycling is the smartest choice that you could make with your wastes.

Besides all this, there are two very important things that recycling helps in. Firstly, it helps maintain the economy of a household. Secondly, recycling helps up creating new job opportunities.
 

Credit: Conserve Energy Future