What is recycling? how is it good?

Question

Like what is recycling, its purpose and what is so good about it? what items can be recycled? whats the positive and negatives? Thanks

Answer 1

Recycling is the process of taking old materials and using them to create new products.  For example, the aluminum that makes a can of soda that you buy from the store could have been part of someone else's can as recently as two months ago.  In that time, the can was collected by a recycling company, sold to an aluminum fabricator, melted down, and made into another brand new can.

A lot of items can be recycled in like this.  For example:

-aluminum

-copper

-steel

-glass

-plastic

-paper

-cardboard

-electronics

-motor oil (take this to an auto parts store for recycling)

-antifreeze (check with your local waste management for this)

Recycling has been around for ages, since weapons makers melted old swords and shields to make new ones.  In WWII, a lot of metal products were melted down to help the war effort.  Just over the last couple of decades, though, the process has become industrialized.

Some people complain that recycling is bad because it's annoying to have to separate your garbage.  However, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

One large benefit to recycling is that it reduces the waste sent to landfills.  Another is that it reduces the environmental destruction required to, for example, drill for oil (to make plastics) or mine bauxite ore (from which aluminum is extracted).  These processes are expensive, time-consuming and harmful.  It just makes more sense to use the materials you already have in pure form.

Which brings me to another point: When we buy bauxite to make aluminum, we frequently have to purchase it from other countries, such as Russia and Australia.  When we need oil for plastic, it usually comes from the middle east.  However, by recycling, we are using materials already on American soil which do not need to be refined to be usable.

Why would we send our money overseas when we have the materials we need right here?  Buy American!  Recycle!

Answer 2

reusing whatever material that is recycled; i.e. melting down aluminum pop cans and making more, or doing the same things with glass/plastic bottles; Getting more than 1 use out of whatever kind of container, such as making multiple uses from your 1 gallon milk/juice jugs or reusing your plastic grocery sacks, etc...

Timothy

:o)

Answer 3

It costs but it is incredibly useful not just for cutting down Co2 but to get rid of all the rubbish which clogs up the world like all the rubbish floating on to midway island