The Value Of Rubbish In A Consumer Society

Did you know that recycling a glass receptacle can save enough energy to light a 100 watt bulb for as much as 4 hours? Every bottle makes a difference.

Many individuals are accustomed to waste at least a portion of what they buy, whether it is food, clothes, furniture, supplies, or materials worldwide. According to the article: “On Dumpster Diving” many valuable items were found by the homeless who searched the dumpster for food. Surprisingly, they found useful items that helped them survive throughout each day. In fact, the products were worth for the exchange of money. At certain times, I myself may be considered to be a wasteful person during certain times such as, not finishing my drink and throwing more than half of it away. While rushing at work during break, this is a usual situation for many people Although, it isn't necessarily on purpose it is considered wasteful, valuable and influence advertising.

You can’t walk across a college campus, past an office building, or through a park without seeing one, two, or ten empty bottles. Many are plastic water bottles. Trash bins overflow them. Those water bottles are a problem. Why? Because only one out of five bottles actually makes it to a recycling bin. Plastic bottles take centuries to decompose and if they are incinerated, toxic byproducts, such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals, are releasing into the atmosphere. The rest are littered on our streets or over filing our landfills. They degrade our landscape and damage our environment. In addition the plastic water bottles are not biodegradable that is, they don’t decay. They remain as trash a hundreds of years.

The growth of consumption has caused a large increase in rubbish. This is due to people having more choice when out shopping. Many years ago women stayed at home and men went to work but now that both men and women are out earning there is a lot more disposable income which ends with people buying luxuries and upgrading items they already have. This results in the old ones being thrown away. People are constantly upgrading and renewing items to better models. Mobile phones bring out new models every year which people feel the need to buy to keep up with the trend and because they want the newest gadgets on the street. Pcs have changed to laptops which gives the pc no home except out to be collected on bin day. This causes a problem

Another misconception that many people hold lies in what happens to bottles of water once they are “recycled”. People believe that once they send a plastic bottle on its way to be recycled, it will be converted into a new, usable, recyclable container. Generally speaking, this is not the case. The majority of recycled plastic gets a new life as something non-recyclable, such as plastic lumber or parking lot bumpers. This does not amount to as high a rate of waste reduction as one would hope for.

PLAN: Outline the ways in which rubbish can be said to have value in a consumer society

Now that we know some of the reason why rubbish has increased in modern society we can look more closely at the value of rubbish. I opened this essay saying that rubbish is often referred to something with no value. Rubbish sometimes can go from being worthless to being of worth again. We can use Thompsons theory ( Thompson, cited in Brown, 2009 p.123 ) to examine this . Rubbish can be often seen as something offensive or not wanted. Take for example household waste , it has to be disposed of or it would cause offence. General house hold waste is worth nothing to an individual , however to a company who collects this waste and gets paid to do so is big business. Not only are they providing a service but are also recycling some of the raw materials to be reprocessed. To a household

Increased recycling means less trash entering landfills. The greatest environmental benefit of recycling is the use of energy and natural resources when old materials are used to make new products. Many consider recycling an easy task. Products that become garbage have an effect on global warming, which makes recycling as a viable option. The phrase ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ was coined to promote recycling and a clean environment. Recycling is a simple way in which people can contribute to making a better world. It takes time and effort to collect, separate and send trash away. Recycling effects every aspect of our environment—homes, schools and hospitals.

The benefit of recycling on the environment is endless even if you are just recycling paper products it can be beneficial. According to a website on recycling paper and other products recycling a single run of the Sunday “New York Times” would save seventy five thousand trees. The amount of wasted land that is left behind by those seventy thousand trees. could have been a strong environment that was destroyed just for a single run of the “New York Times”. According to the same source recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator. This energy used to burn the plastic is payed by the American people’s tax dollar that money could be saved by you just by simpling recycling. In the same source it says that approximately one billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the United States this paper thrown away is sent to these giant landfills and cost millions of dollars to dispose of as where if it was recycled we could save money by not having to pay for the paper sent to landfill and save money by not having to have it burned down or stored. The average American uses eighty five million tons of paper a year; about six hundred and eighty pounds per person according to the source earlier

43% of the plastic is wasted on a global scale by being disposed of in landfills where all it does it

By recycling, people save half or more of the money they spend a year. An example is instead of buying a new case of water bottles every week, you can reuse them, which saves you more money that you can spend on things that you do need. In the article, the author stated, “Choosing sustainable materials for a product, streamlining the production process, and reducing the need for packaging all result in significant cost savings for the manufacturer.” This statement supports the fact that you should support recycling because it saves you money because the author explains that by recycling businesses save

We as consumers have been lied to as far as them being recycled and safe for the planet. Plastic bottles are not sustainable, no matter what we've been told. Using vast quantities of fossil fuels and water, these bottles are manufactured, filled, and shipped around the globe. (Not a

Another reason we should have recycling mandatory is because plastic hurts the environment badly. A lot of fish are dying in the ocean from consumption of plastic. A lot of different species are going extinct because of plastic being dumped into the ocean, and other trash. Plastic is really hard to digest for animals making it fatal if an animal eats enough of it. This is happening to a lot of fish and coastal birds, where plastic washes up frequently, or when they mistake a piece of plastic for a fish. Species have gone extinct because of plastic. It is estimated by specialists, that 50% of all plastic used is used once and then thrown away(Plastic Oceans Foundation). Plastic is very cheap, and there is no way to eliminate plastic usage entirely, but when used, it

Throwing away the plastic bottles will create a lot of trash. Even though plastic drinking bottles are recyclable, most end up in landfills or as litter. This will impact society as the government must hire people to deal with the landfills and the plastic pollution. It is going to increase the government’s expense.

One may argue that waste culture is a direct result of the prosperity of the industrial revolution, the obsession with “untouched” hygienic food in the Victorian era or the media’s constant ingraining of “disposable items” as a symbol of class, convenience and freedom.However, the primary impact of these turning points lies in the precedent they set for waste management. One that is expanding its scope from local to global