The Recycling Of The United States Essay

Recycling is the process of making new products from a product that has originally served its purpose. The process of recycling starts when used products are disposed in an appropriate, environmentally friendly way. Items made from materials such as paper, tin cans, aluminum cans, plastic water bottles, and glass, which people use in everyday life, can be separated from regular trash and put in an appropriate recycling bin. The United States now realizes the importance of recycling. However, many ignorant people still think separating recyclables requires too much work. Requiring mandatory recycling would prod these individuals into action. Lack of recycling leads to dramatic consequences such as polluting the environment and raising the number of landfills. Delay is critical; time plays a significant role in waste management. The sooner American communities recycle properly the better it will be for the environment and our surroundings. People need to become conscious and take responsibility as a society to protect the earth, keep it clean and beautiful, and preserve the natural resources. The United States can achieve this goal by implementing mandatory recycling.

Because we are a generation centered on convenience, so many people prefer to choose the path of least resistance. If something seems troublesome, they may feel they don’t have the time or energy to follow through. Consequently, recycling needs to be more convenient than throwing recyclables away. For example, there should never be a garbage can without a recycling bin next to it. This should be common sense. However, far too often this scenario is evident in high traffic

There are many programs but too little enthusiasm. ”Recycling programs abound, but people are often lackadaisical about putting plastic,paper, glass and metal into those bins”(“How Do You Encourage Recycling”). The world has enough programs but it need more people. People need to think about how recycling helps everything and everyone around them. ”They asked people to think more abstractly about why recycling contributed to the community, air, land, and water resources “(“How Do You Encourage Recycling”). When people recycle they need to remember why they are doing this and what it helps. The world needs to look at what it can gain or lose when recycling and not recycling. ”Marketing professor Kate White of University of British Columbia shared studies that looked at two kinds of messages:those that highlight the negative consequences of not recycling,loss framed message, versus those that emphasize the positive consequences of recycling,gain framed message.”(“How Do You Encourage Recycling”). These messages will address what people can gain and lose. Motivating people to recycle could make a huge change in land pollution even solve the problem with

A teacher once told me, “One mans trash is another mans treasure, what he doesn’t appreciate the next man will.” Until recently analyzing this statement I always pondered about it as a metaphor using the thoughts, and ideas of people, but after reading Garbology I have come up with a literal process of reusing trash. On average Americans wastes 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States which ends up in one of the over 3,500 landfills. According to Edward Humes, the author of Garbology, “Garbage has become one the most accurate measures of prosperity in the twenty-first-century America and the world,” which proves that trash is a means to improving the success rate of Americans. This reminds me of the words of Confucius who stated, “When a goal cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goal, adjust the action step” because with the knowledge from garbology we can

In 2012, Americans generated about 251 million tons of trash and recycled and composted almost 87 million tons of this material (“Municipal Solid Waste”). There are many ways to end our environmental crisis, such as reducing our amount of trash, recycling items, and reusing other items.

Garbage is the number one export produced by the United States of America. This is the “dirty love affair” reflected upon in the book Garbology by Edward Humes. The average American annually generates the waste of 35 billion plastic bottles, 4.5 million tons of office paper, and 40 billion plastic utensils (Humes, 2012, p. 16). All of these examples can be recycled, but mostly are not. This leads to every American, “standing atop more than 35 tons of waste a year” leaving a “lifetime legacy of 2,700 tons” of trash (Humes, 2012, p. 10). Garbage is produced when individuals consume an item then discard the remains that are no longer useful or desired. It takes energy to recycle and reuse items. It is easier and uses less resources to just toss

Much has been said about recycling; however much of it is myth rather than fact. Much of this myth has been created by the recycling industry that has flourished recently. According to one professor, the recycling business in the United States has exploded, growing from $4.6 billion in annual sales in 1968 to $236 billion in sales in 2008 (Bradley). This means that since the Mobro 4000, the recycling industry’s sales have increased by just over 5,100%. This growth has given them influence over other industries as well as politics to encourage recycling in communities. This has led some communities, like New York City, to begin

In 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generated 250 million tons of municipal solid waste, MSW1, of which only 87 million tons were recycled or composted (“Municipal Solid Waste”, 1). This value, however, does not represent the total amount waste generated by the United States since MSW only accounts for 2 percent of total waste generated. As more trash is generated, space to construct more landfills becomes an issue. In order to reduce the amount of solid waste produced, the federal government must implement and enforce a new waste disposal method that emphasizes composting food waste.

Engaging with the problems with landfills and other problems with landfills will help reduce greenhouse gasses and other hazardous wastes, while relieving the stress of finding ways to help the landscape and biodiversity of earth tremendously. The topics that will be discussed are about Landfills, Biodegradation, and hazardous wastes. Landfills, have become more and more of a problem each and every day because the Americans are producing more waste than they have been. Individually, we need to find better ways to fix our biodegradation systems we have because if landfills don't degrade properly then it can be very dangerous for the areas around them. Hazardous waste is the worst type of waste when there is no way to treat it (Lerner). Hazardous

The world population is around 7 billion people and every person produces about 4.4 pounds of waste per day. More people will lead to the increase of wastes products and then will increase the risk of environmental issues. Today, the world able to recycle only 30% of waste products. According to Environmental Protection Agency “Approximately 55% of 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States ends up in one of the over 3,500 landfills. Municipal solid waste landfills are the second-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for approximately 22 percent of these emissions in 2008”

“The affluent, fast-paced, throwaway American culture is producing trash on a stupendous scale.” (Young,Mitchell page 14). We are living in a plastic universe, and very unaware. The problem with plastic, is how frequently it is being used, and having no true way of disposing it. The fibers of plastic are in just about everything on Earth, not only is it sitting inside the Earth, it is in everything surrounding us. There is plastic materials in food containers, make up, fuel, and so much more. Using science, and technology, we need to find new ways of disposing unwanted shreds of plastic, and other recyclables. Recycling might not get rid of all the issues growing with global warming, but being aware of what is being

Landfills not only contaminate Earth’s soil and groundwater, but also produce a greenhouse gas known as, methane. In order to reduce the amount of methane being produced at landfills, humans should compost yard waste and recycle as much as possible (GAIA). Methane stands 25 to 72 times stronger than carbon dioxide and can be the foundation to health effects such as cancer and asthma. Landfills not only pollute the air we breathe, but are a significant source of global climate change. According to the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, for every ton of waste, more than 70 tons of manufacturing, oil explorations, and coal combustion form (GAIA). In 2012, Derek Thompson, stated the world would produce 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage just for that particular year. Thompson appraised that amount to the equivalent weight of 7,000 Empire State Buildings (Derek Thompson 2012). Out of the 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage, 46 percent is organic, 4 percent metal, 5 percent glass, 10 percent plastic, 17 percent paper, and 18 percent is other (Derek Thompson 2012). Nevertheless, all of these end up in the many landfills throughout the world, where they sit and decompose into Earth’s soil and produce the greenhouse gas, methane, and pollute our water and cause health

A worker at a paper factory in Illinois states, “Then the issue was saving a tree. But trees are replaced. We plant them, we cut them, we plant them again” (Pendleton). The worker also said, “The problem now is the landfill situation, I think this one is going to stick” (Pendleton). By 1991 thirty-nine states and hundreds of local governments have passed laws or solutions requiring the purchase of recycled paper. According to Henry Miller, vice president of a paper mill said, “By volume, thirty-eight percent of solid waste in a landfill is paper and cardboard” (Pendleton). That paper and cardboard, if recycled could have produced that much paper or other products and it would have cleared up thirty-eight percent of many landfills across America. One major way to get people involved with recycling is the environment perspective. Not only would the landfills be cut down the environment gains a lot by having people recycle. So what do the states do to keep the environment clean? They enact laws against litter and waste. One way is the state requiring the deposit on beer and soft-drink bottles and cans (Prichard 8A). In those states, millions of bottles and cans that once were left on beaches, tossed in rivers and parks or thrown along the highways are being taken back to stores instead for a refund. A twenty-year old student from Michigan said, “Throwing away cans is like throwing away money to me” (Prichard 8A). These state laws must be working if people have this

As industry has evolved, the creation and disposal of waste has become a significant issue. People generate waste simply by going through their everyday activities, and almost anything from food, clothes, and textbooks can eventually become waste. With the world rapidly moving towards urbanization and the population growing at an exponential rate, it is understandable that the amount of waste being generated daily is on the rise (Hoornweg, 2012). The shear amount of waste being generated makes it difficult to dispose of without any severe environmental consequences. Last year an estimated 1.4 billion tons of municipal solid waste was generated, an amount that

The most updated information pertaining to ecopsychology has shown possible reasons as to why most do not recycle. Looking at one known layer of the branch, Raymond De Young, environmental psychology professor at UM states that, "An important... overlooked, aspect of this education effort involves the error of assuming that once someone knows why he or she should recycle, he or she will know exactly how...". This common misconception is explored greatly throughout many articles and studies. A research study 's results exploring a similar topic actually ended up statistically showing that "Recyclers had significantly greater procedural knowledge (but not greater content knowledge)… than non-recyclers" (Arkkelin, D. et al.). This shows a direct link towards ignorance of the recycling process and lack of recycling itself. As a matter of fact, according to IPSOS, it has been reported that people feel recycling facilities are "not accessible or convenient to where they live (25%). Others report that it is too time consuming (10%), that they just forget (10%), that they aren’t sure what is recyclable and what isn’t (8%), or the cost (6%)". However, these are just the physical reasons, what about the psychological aspect? The truth is, very few people actually voice their physiological reasons behind not recycling. According to a study conducted in 2011, people