Top Recycling Facts
The US Environmental Protection Agency characterizes recycling as the "sorting
, collecting, and processing materials to manufacture and sell them as new products." In a world facing multiple environmental issues like pollution and global warming, of which we are all guilty, recycling is one clear method to help cleanse the environment and prevent more waste from being piled up in our landfills and worse, in the world's oceans. Being apathetic is not one of our choices at this 11th hour. Here are some recycling facts to help us place in proper context just how crucial recycling is.
Recycling saves energy and materials by lessening the need for fresh material for production. It also helps to protect the environment by scaling down on trash and pollution. It reduces the transmission of greenhouse fumes to the atmosphere by lowering incineration of trash and the utilization of petroleum for manufacturing and transport.
Recycling facts about plastic
In 1862, plastic was toasted as a practical and progressive breakthrough at the London World's Fair. Gradually, however, our opinion of plastic has suffered a drastic reversal. It is now perceived to be a principal pollutant due to its strength, it requires a very long time to thoroughly decompose plastic. The plastic trash thrown in our landfills or floating in the world's oceans, will stay long after our generation is gone.
Envion, a company from Washington D.C., in the United States, just a few weeks ago bared a new plant that's supposed to transform plastic garbage into a fuel component. If this is accurate, it could prove to be the solution to the world's plastic pollution quandary. With this application, it will become profitable for industrialists to dig up waste dumps and the oceans for plastic to meet the industrial society's escalating need for more fuel and energy.
Recycling plastics save twice as much energy compared to burning these in an incinerator.
Plastic bags and other plastic debris that are thrown in our oceans kill a million sea creatures annually. Bisphenol-A, a known hormonal disruptor present in polycarbonate plastic, is now traceable in the system of hundreds of thousands of individuals, notably those whose basic diet consist of seafoods, leading to pregnancy terminations. It's said to be double the size of the state of Texas and holds as much as 100 million tons of plastic trash. Due to the action of the sun and sea water, the plastic in the patch is breaking down into fragmentary pieces and are mistaken for food by fish and other sea organisms, which we eat - the plastic we carelessly threw away has come back via the food chain to torment us all.
Recycling facts about paper
Regular papers like The Daily Telegraph or The San Francisco Chronicle, or your local Main Street Gazette are worrying that circulation have been steadily going down in recent years as more and more people are now obtaining their news from the internet. The paperless Information Age may be bad news to our traditional news dailies, but it's certainly a good thing to the planet.
Here's the unsavory truth about the newspaper and glossy magazine you pick up every weekend: 500 thousand trees we're cut down to manufacture the paper necessary for the Sunday edition of all newspapers in this country.
If we reuse just 10 percent of the newspapers we buy and discard afterward, we'd save 25,000,000 trees annually. The best answer, nix all subscriptions NOW or subscribe exclusively to the internet edition of your top newspaper.
Recycling facts about metal
Are you aware of the viral film about aluminum cans? It's remarkable how we squander this precious metal by not recycling. The volume of aluminum cans we throw away yearly is said to be sufficient to rebuild all the passenger and frieght aircraft in this country three times a year!
Recycling a single ton of aluminum is equal to storing electricity to power an ordinary American house for ten years! Aluminum cans represent the ideal model for what is known as closed-loop recycling system. This means that all post-consumer aluminum container may be recycled to produce a brand new can, which will be up for sale in your local store in as short as 4-6 weeks - closed-loop, nothing wasted.
You can dig up more recycling facts on the web and in your libraries. You can also ask your town's waste management executive to gather more locale-specific recycling statistics. Recycling is absolutely a crucial part in our collective aspiration to safeguard the environment and make our world a better and marvelous place to live in. Let's recycle.
by: Michael Arms
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