Recycling And The Environment How Far Reaching Is The Impact

Recycling makes sense. It's common knowledge that wastefulness is a vice, not a virtue, and this reasoning usually keeps us tossing soda cans into the bin and washing out peanut butter jars. However, motivation to clean peanut butter jars, a time-consuming and annoying task, could benefit from more potent motivation, something more inspiring than our own moral improvement. It would profit us to consider the fact that recycling has an far-reaching impact on the environment.LANDFILLSLandfills could regenerate within a century if not for aluminum, plastic and glass. Aluminum takes up to 200 years to decompose, plastic bottles take 450 years, and glass does not degrade whatsoever. Some cities separates garbage prior to dumping and run a flea market for larger items. They compost everything they can and resell the compost to local nurseries. They even shred tires to compost them. On average, recycling everything possible would reduce a landfill's size by 50%. GLOBAL WARMING Reducing greenhouse gas requires more than auto regulations. Making paper with recycled and not raw materials creates 73% less pollution. Doing the same with glass produces 20% less. The gassiest culprit is landfills. The landfill's anaerobic decomposition releases the harmful gas methane. The E.P.A. reports that landfills account for 37% of methane emission in the United States. But happily, some communities have converted landfills into power plants by drilling into the landfill, installing pipes to capture the methane gas, and feeding it directly to combustion engines which run generators to produce electricity. This brings us to our next topic, energy.ENERGY RESOURCESOften, making products with recycled items requires less energy. Making recycled glass requires a lower melting point than raw materials for new glass. The lower temperature requirement for the furnace results in a savings of 10 gallons of oil for every ton of glass. Recycling aluminum takes a whopping 95% less energy than producing it from bauxite. Also, since plastic is a petroleum product, all production of new plastic depletes our supply of fossil fuel. HABITATS Recycling reduces forestry and mining expansion, thereby reducing invasion of habitats of plants and animals. Recycling plastic bags keeps the bags out of the ocean, where they break down into plankton-sized bits that start to attract toxins and endanger marine life.WATER SUPPLYRecycling helps protect our water supply, both from overuse and contamination. Recycling one ton of paper saves 7,000 gallons of water. Recycling clothing, wearing and giving hand-me-downs and using old clothing for rags saves water. It requires 50 gallons of water to manufacture one cotton t-shirt. Recycling also protects water quality. As plastics and batteries degrade, harmful chemicals leech into the groundwater. Manufacturing paper, clothing and countless other products releases chemical by-products into the water supply. Motor oil is particularly harmful to the water supply. Many mechanics offer a recycling program.All these facts should give us hope for the future. As scientists and newscasters report environmental disaster, we don't have to just sit and worry. We have something we can do.Informational credit to http://www.egtireshredders.com. Follow Dude, Sustainable! on Twitter or Pinterest, or subscribe to our newsletter.