Recycling
The Info You’re REALLY After
People are generally familiar with the term recycling. If you
can't reuse or repurpose items, recycling is the next option.
Recycling involves collecting items that are no longer useful in
their current form and processing them, their parts, or some of
their parts into raw materials from which new goods are made.
Have you ever wondered just how effective recycling is? Here's
a statistic: recycling steel, aluminum, copper, lead, paper, and
plastics can save between 65% and 95% of the energy it takes
to produce new goods from these materials. Recycling not only
reduces trash that goes to landfills and incinerators, but also
reduces the amount of greenhouse gases released into the
atmosphere. EPA statistics for 2005 state that recycling
prevented the release of 79 million tons of carbon into the air.
That's about as much as would be produced annually by 39
million cars.
You can see that recycling is far better than simply throwing an
item in the trash. States and cities are becoming greener all the
time and making it easier for all of us to recycle.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
Paper
Technology may be solving this problem for us to a large
extent since more and more people are using computers or
iPhones to get their news. If you still get newspapers at home,
don't throw them out with the garbage anymore. Take them to
your recycling center. Stack them up until you have a good
pile, and make it a habit to recycle them.
Metal Cans
Aluminum is the most abundant metal on earth. Hard to
believe that it wasn't discovered until the 1820s. The
aluminum beverage can first appeared in 1963, and now it's
the single largest use of aluminum. Most food and drink cans
made from aluminum or steel are recyclable. You can recycle
used aluminum foil too.
Plastic
Most plastics are recyclable but this is a little tricky because
there are seven different types of plastics. Each plastic item is
coded with a stamp of a triangle with the number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7 inside it. The code usually appears on the bottom of the
plastic product. Plastics with the numbers 1 or 2 are most
easily recyclable.
