“Why should I even recycle?”, is far too common of a statement is the 21st century. As a culture we have industrialized our lives, and with this industrialization we have created a lot of waste. During the 20th century, people were too excited about the innovation of paper plates and plastic utensils that they did not stop to think, “I wonder if this is okay for our environment?” Well, after years of society promoting convenience instead of sustainability, we have produced a mass amount of waste. The amount of trash produced in the world yearly has been tripled since 1960. I think some people forget that matter can not be created nor destroyed, and a styrofoam cup can take millions of years to decompose. Humans of our modern society throw their garbage away as if it disappears once it hits the can. Yet, that is not the case at all. Trash is merely relocated to be rejoined with more trash. These massive piles of waste sit at dumps for years hardly beginning to decompose because of the environment they are immersed in. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an ocean gyre containing vast amounts of debris, and it is estimated to be the size of the continental U.S.. Americans produce trash at about 4.6 pounds a day per person. Some recycling is picked out from landfills, but most is left to be dealt with by other processes. Trash that is not recycled, composted, or burned is buried in landfills. The process of decomposition of trash in landfills takes hundreds of years to complete.
For example, more than 80% of the oceans surfaces are covered in trash or polluted. Therefore, if we continue to throw trash away, many of our natural resources will be gone before our eyes. We are responsible for this planet so we should start treating it better. Not only would it help the planet but also it would protect our wildlife. One big result of not recycling is the Great Barrier Reef. Recently the Great Barrier Reef has been in its worst condition as possible. There has been tons of trash surfacing the water, the wild life as starting to die out because of it and the list continues. But thankfully, there are people out there that are trying to save it from becoming nothing but a polluted ocean. Another reason why we should recycle is it creates more jobs more people. An estimated 1.56 billion people in the US are currently homeless. Why not help them out and the environment by hiring more people for recycling related jobs. It would not only help the environment but it would help people in need for
I am going to persuade you that recycling should be required because it is very dangerous to not recycle. If more people started to recycle, it would reduce the pollution in the air or as some people call it smog. The way this works is by cleaning the air we breathe by not having to burn the extra plastics, papers, and cardboard people did not recycle. Almost all the things we buy are all made in factories, which creates pollution. If there were less factories, less pollution is created.
America currently has a growing population of over 300 million people. Every day the average American produced 4.4 pounds of garbage. As a nation Americans produced over 200 million tons of waste in 2013. Only 34.4 percent of that waste was recovered. Over 65 percent of that garbage is left to rot and pollute the environment. Many other countries face the same epidemic. There are many ways Americans can reduce pollution and keep our planet cleaner, one for those ways for instance is recycling. Recycling defined is to treat or process used or waste materials, to make suitable for reuse. The process starts by knowing what to recycle and how. Understanding the effects and benefits of reprocessing can persuade people to make
1) Are you aware of the amount of waste you create each day? I do not believe anyone is completely aware of the amount of waste they generate on a daily basis. It is such a natural action – throw something in the trash – that it is automatic and done without much or any consideration as to where it goes, where it came from, or where will it ultimately go or become. I do recycle and compost when possible, but that too becomes a process that sometime appears moot because products are being made from materials that do not qualify or require special centers for recycling.1 We have become a “use it and throw it away” society.
A recent study by Nature Climate Change shows this ongoing problem is caused by “224 million more pounds being thrown out than previously thought,” suggesting too much recyclable items are being thrown out: “For every 100 pounds of trash we throw away, 35 pounds is paper” and although about 80% of goods and materials can be recycled, only 32% are actually being reused (Powell, EPA, McKinney). As reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “In 2013, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash, and recycled and composted [only] 87 million tons of this material” (EPA). This again shows that a good amount of materials that can be recycled are more often being thrown into the trash. The EPA estimates that “we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.40 pounds per person per day ” in 2012 (EPA). That’s less than 30% of individually generated trash being
America is one of the largest countries along with being one of the largest waste producers in the world. In 2013 Americans generated about 254 million tons of ("Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2013 Fact Sheet"). So where does all of this trash go? Approximately 55% of 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States ends up in one of the over 3500 landfills ("Center for Sustainability & Commerce"). This trash that ends up in the landfill consist of metals, steel and aluminum can, plastic bottles, and paper along with other miscellaneous items. The issue with this is that the majority of these items will never decompose and just sit in the ground forever. While other items like paper will eventually decompose there is still a better alternative than putting it into a landfill. This alternative is known as recycling. What can we recycle? What can the average family do to recycle more? Where does trash end up if it is not properly thrown away or recycled? What is the impact of the improperly disposed trash on our environment? What can the government do to help?
Americans make more than 200 million tons of garbage each year, enough to fill Busch Stadium from top to bottom twice a day, that’s over 1800 feet! according to Ballparks. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 75% of the American waste stream is recyclable, but we only recycle about 30% of it says Do Something. With the invention of the virtually indestructible material well known as plastic, on top of the rapidly evolving technological world, and the extreme reduction of locations where landfills can be built, it’s hard to believe that 75% of the waste stream in America alone is recyclable, and yet only 30% of it is actually recycled. Recycling is a beneficial solution to many of our increasingly important environmental
The people of America throw away more trash than any other society in the world! America consumes 80 percent of our planet's resources, even though we make up only 20 percent of the world's population (Cooper 267). The average person throws away 4.3 pounds of trash each day. That's about 30 pounds per week and 120 pounds per month! (“Reduce and Reuse” 1). Americans throw away too much - that's the bottom line (Cooper 265). There is a garbage crisis in America and “the only part of the anti-waste message that has taken hold to any noticeable degree is the call to recycle” (Cooper 267). Our country's issues on trash and recycling go hand in hand. America produces too much trash, and the environment is suffering. There is some effort
In 1987, a barge by the name of Mobro 4000 was struggling to find a place to dump 3,168 tons of trash. It traveled from Long Island, where the trash came from, down the entire East Coast until it reached Belize. The barge stopped at multiple ports along the way to dump the trash, but was turned away each time. Many people watched the story unfold on the news, and realized how little landfill space the country actually had. People frantically started lowering household waste through recycling what was possible to be recycled instead of throwing it in the trash. This brought us the environmental movement of the late 80’s. Some people say the reason the Mobro 4000 wasn’t able to dump over 3,000 tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) was because they didn’t have the appropriate papers filled out to give the barge permission to dump at a particular landfill site. But others are confident the story is true, and hold the argument that the world is limited on how much landfill space there is and abide that something needs to be done sooner than later. Whether someone thinks the story is true or not, it is undeniable that recycling would keep a barge from trying to dump that many tons of trash anytime in the near future. We don’t have to recycle every plastic bottle or piece of paper we come into contact with on a daily basis, but recycling even a few of these items a week can still have a positive outcome. On average, a typical middle
These days, our earth has been filled by a lot of waste. There is a lot of garbage, plastic waste, and electronic waste. We always produce it and dump it when we need the new one. Our waste are piling up and continuously accumulating. Plastic waste is one of the biggest problems for us now. And our solution in this problem is recycling. In my opinion, recycling is a way to manage used items into new products. We can reduce, reuse, and recycling (3R) waste management (Peter, 2013). We can reduce our waste clothes with reuse it. There are some reasons why peoples recycle used or unwanted items, which are, prevent wasting unusable materials that still have usage after recycled, reduce the application of raw materials, reduce energy
People Need to Recycle In the United Sates, where the population is inflated every year. The amount of space for landfills decreases every day. The need for recycling should not be asked, it should just be done out of habit. Everyone in America needs to recycle, to help the lamdfill problem, help the environment, and help produce new products from recycled goods. In America there is about two-hundred and eight tons of residential and commercial trash generated a year, 4.3 pounds per person a day (Prichard 1A). This is an overwhelming amount of trashed produced yearly. When people recycle this number can be drastically cut. But many people do not practice and use
Everybody knows that it is important to recycle. We all learned as children that not everything is biodegradable and most waste either takes hundreds of years to decompose, like plastic, glass, or disposable diapers, or it won 't at all, like tinfoil and styrofoam. Since we know that putting these things into the environment is harmful not only to Earth itself but also to us, why do we still use landfills so frequently? The answer to that question is this: It is not an important issue to the average American. There is not a mountain of garbage sitting in anybody 's front yard and therefore, they just do not care. If we don 't start caring about the environment and recycle, our beautiful earth won 't stay like this for long, and eventually there will be landfills everywhere you look. We can stop that from happening today by making recycling important to everyone.
On average, each person produces 4.4 pounds of waste per day. If all that trash is going in the garbage instead of recycling, you can multiply it by the 7 billion people on earth. That will give you 31 billion pounds of trash in landfills every single day if did not continue to recycle. (Marck). If we stop recycling, we will be sure to run out of resources in no time (Marck). In order to effectively abolish the accumulation of waste, which could be very harmful, we must take a concept into our hands called recycling. Even though some may look at recycling as a waste of time, energy, and money, it should be mandatory around the world because it helps boost the economy and takes away from global warming.
“Today, U.S. citizen’s produce over 250 million tons of municipal solid waste, before recovery, which is close to one ton per person”, says Jay Withgott’s 6th edition book. The world is growing in population and people are just exceeding in the amount of waste they are adding to the Earth. Waste is defined as any unwanted material from a human activity or process. Municipal solid waste is an extensive problem in the United States, but so is an Industrial solid waste and Hazardous waste. If people repurposed items that can be reused, we would be saving plenty of resources. Recycling is the one of the best ways to get rid of waste. Recycling is the process of turning used materials into materials that can be reused as a material or for a new purpose. Per the North Carolina Data Waste Management, the amount of trash North Carolinians throw away, would fill enough Dumpsters to line the length of North Carolina’s Interstate 40 more than six times in one year. That is almost 2,750 miles of dumpsters each year. We are going to focus on how recycling saves energy, conserves waste by reusing materials, and protects natural resources if recycling materials are being used. This relates to the protection of land and ecological resources and why one should recycle.
Care for a snack? Try the chocolate bar that comes in recyclable packaging, or maybe pick up a package of sustainable wood-fiber-filled baby diapers, or a no-animal-testing sunscreen, nontoxic spray cleaner, an entry form for a Prius giveaway or a cloth grocery bag for your shopping (Layton, 2014). Many products have become useful in so many ways that not recycling is harmful as well as unwise and uneconomical. There’s not enough room to throw trash all over the place, pollute, and simply not recycle. In order to understand the importance of recycling, people must first understand what recycling is, what it involves, and how it works. It is also important to know not only the effects of recycling but benefits as well. There are