What is more important to recycle....?

Question

Metals, plastic or paper?

Answer 1

I think all of them but mostly plastic.

Answer 2

I think metals. When looking at the cost and the impact on the environment to produce each of these from their raw state metal has the most impact on the environment and societies.

Anyone claiming recycling isn't a positive is only parroting a belief that comes from the anti environment crowd who are consistently wrong.

even republicans understood the need to recycle by introducing the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) into legislation, in 1976.

Answer 3

i work for recycle and they are about the same.if it a good thing to recycle it keeps everything from filling our landfills.

Answer 4

They are pretty much equally important but if I were to choose, I would have to say plastic. It hurts animals, and takes the longest to break down. CFCs are a type of plastic containers used at fast food restraunts that are VERY bad for the enviorment, and they are thrown away and put in land fills. Something can only be recycled so many times, either way, and plastic is the one that you can recycle the least amount of times. Then, whats left STILL goes in a land fill and it takes years for it to break down.

Hope I helped?

Answer 5

In my opinion recycling of metals, plastics and papers all are important. If you want to compare the importance or prioritize then metals and plastics are more importance. i would chose metals for most important because the ecological rucksack for metals in bigger than others.i hope, you got the idea.

thank you.

Answer 6

I think you should recycle all of them, if you are wondering so that you can chose what to recycle then ur otta luck

Answer 7

Metals are the most important to recycle..... we are using the planet's stock of metal at an unsustainable pace so we need to keep on re-using it. The pollution from mining and refining metals is huge, recycling uses energy but without all the toxic pollution.

Plastic would be next as it causes such a problem of disposal. It takes maybe as much as 100 years for some plastics to degrade in landfill.... that means that most, if not all, of the plastic ever made is still on the planet. We are in danger of wrapping the whole planet in cling film!!

Answer 8

I agree with those who say all three should be recycled, and also aagree that recycling keeps them out of the landfill.

However, I think it's more important to recycle plastic than metal and paper because plastic takes ages to decompose while paper and metal will decompose naturally.

Answer 9

i would think they are equally important.

Answer 10

plastic will produce lots of poison gas when burnt

paper use up lots of trees

metal refinery produces lots of carbons when producing metals

that's the reason for recycling those, all of them will harm the environment one way or another  :(

Answer 11

all about the same i would  guess

Answer 12

Plastic because paper and metal go back to  the earth more gracefully. Paper and metals require minimal processing compared to plastic.

Answer 13

I have seen studies that suggest that recycling is bad for the environment.  At minimum, it would be hard argue that we could spend our environmental dollars in more important areas such as creating scrubber technology for coal plants or clean up our water systems.  Land fills fall very low on the environmental problem list compared to air pollution, which recycling contributes to, not helps. All those extra reclycing dump trucks waste tons of fuel.

To answer you original questions. Glass is by far the worse, as it ends up using a lot more energy than it saves.  Paper is pretty worthless as only ~20% is actually saved in the process and tons of energy is wasted recreated crapy paper (think extra dump trucks and reprocessing for little reward).  Metals are by far the best, as even without the massive government subsibies and laws they would be economical to recylce (i.e. it is an effecient process versus most wasteful recylcing programs)  

Recylcing makes the average man feel better about themselves but distracts us for the real enviromental problems in the world and does little good. In other words, recycling has a massive opportunities costs.

Answer 14

I think they're all equal as they all can be damaging to the earth if they're not recycled.