Recycling to ‘go green’
Recycling is the first action that anybody comes up with when they are asked how we can ‘go green’ and help take care of earth.
Recycling is actually just one way of minimising waste. In general, the best way to minimise waste is to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
REDUCE – this is the basic step, if everyone reduces the amount plastic, paper etc that is used then automatically the amount of waste is reduced. However, we cannot completely avoid it. That is when REUSE comes in. If we reuse plastic bags, and plastic or glass containers then again waste is minimised. Just think, if everyone reused a plastic bag just once – how many plastic bags are prevented from being added on to the waste dumps? However, not all materials can be reused indefinitely, they have to be thrown away at some point. That is when RECYCLING is the best option. Recycling is a process that uses waste to re-produce a certain material, thus preventing the waste of reusable products, and minimising the need to access fresh raw material. It also minimises the amount of energy used to manufacture the produce – recycling a plastic bottle uses two-thirds less energy than having to make a plastic bottle from fresh raw materials.
Following are some interesting facts and figures that will provide you with some food for thought.
1.The energy saved from recycling one plastic bottle can light a 60-watt bulb for 6 hours.
2.Every tonne of paper that is recycled saves – 17 trees, 60, 000 gallons of water, and 225 kilowatt hours. (cutting trees also causes of a lot of damage to the surrounding area – so saving 17 trees is quite a lot.)
3.The seventeen trees are capable of removing 250 pounds of carbon from the atmosphere in one year.
4.Making paper from pure wood pulp uses 70% more energy than if paper is recycled.
5.The average time taken for a plastic bottle to decompose is 700 years!
6.It is estimated that every hour around 250, 000 plastic bottles are dumped .
7.Glass is very resilient product and can be recycled over and over again.
8.Styrofoam packs can be around for at least 500 years.
9.About 80% of our garbage can be recycled – but only about 28% of it is recycled in reality.
These figures and statistics are estimates – but still there is no argument as to just how much of energy and resources we could save by recycling. Recycling also uses up energy thus the first priority should be to reduce and reuse and if both those fail – then please go ahead and recycle. There are recycling centers located within the city limits – so just a small search effort will help you to identify these centers. Reduce, reuse and recycle to minimise the amount of plastics that end up in landfills.
Comments/thoughts/ innovative ideas? Email savegreenwithet@gmail.com
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