Why recycle?

Question

why have big trucks stopping for little bins when all the trash could be sorted at a plant.2 x the trucks and personell and a lot of recyclable material gets buried.beurocrasy?

Answer 1

sorting mixed garbage is expensive, it is cheaper to presort it at home and collect it separately.

In Switzerland they have 7 different garbage, and each is put in a different bin and collected on a different day, and if you put the wrong type of garbage in a garbage bin you could be fined heavily.

Answer 2

The more you recycle, the the more you have to recreate a totally new item. and that means taking less material out of the ground to make it and using less chemicals, or pollutants, to recreate a new item.  Oh, and then you still have to get rid of the original item that was not recycled! Adds more to the land fill!

Answer 3

the amount of recycable material offsets the pollution of the trucks by quite a bit.

Answer 4

because it is good for the bottle and good for the can!!!

it takes time to train old dogs new tricks....we are all just getting use to the recycle and hopefully years down the road it will be second nature ...

i think we need to concentraite on the trash maker compinies like the plastic bag people and all the package people all the crappy desposiable products that we toss..the cheep way things are made not to last....

the disposable dipers ...make that stuff out of something else!!!!  of all the new ideas in my lifetime that have come and gone ...im glad to be apart of the recycle

Answer 5

Personally, I have always maintained that recycling shouldn't cost any money, if the stuff is worth recycling it should either:

1) pay it's own way

2) the manufacturers of such items should pay

Never mind this everybody paying (through taxes) for people's poor buying habits.

I *think* that if this was adopted recycling would pretty well take care of itself.

Answer 6

there are plenty of trees in the United States. As a result of the forest products industry’s

sustainable forestry practices, there are more trees in the U.S. today than there were 75 years ago.

And because more trees are grown in the U.S. than are harvested, there will be plenty of trees and

forest products for future generations to enjoy.

But we should continue to recover our paper products for recycling. While our forest resources are

abundant, adding recycled fiber to new wood fiber is a good way to stretch our forest resources.

Recycling also helps control waste disposal problems. For every ton of paper recovered for recycling,

about 3 cubic yards of landfill space are saved. And in many cases, recovering paper for recycling

can save communities money that they would otherwise have to spend for disposal.

In 1999, about 45 percent of the paper used in the U.S. was diverted from the waste stream to be

recycled into new paper products. Today, recovered paper supplies over 38 percent of the total fiber

needed to produce our country’s paper products.

   2. Recycling Saves Natural Resources - By making products from recycled materials instead of virgin materials, we conserve land and reduce the need to drill for oil, dig for minerals, and cut down trees. One of the first environmental lessons many children learn, cannot be overstated. Half the Earth's forests are gone, and up to 95 percent of the original forest area in the U.S. has been cut down.

   3. Recycling Saves Energy - It usually takes less energy to make recycled products; recycled aluminum, for example, takes 95 percent less energy than new aluminum from bauxite ore. Using recycled materials not only cuts down on the energy used in the manufacturing process, it dramatically reduces emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. For example, recycling one ton of glass results in energy savings of more than 300% and lowers carbon dioxide emissions by 3.46 tons.

   4. Recycling Saves Clean Air and Water - In most cases, making products from recycled materials creates less air pollution and water pollution than making products from virgin materials. Turning trees into paper uses more water than any other industrial process in the U.S.

   5. Recycling Saves Landfill Space - When the materials that you recycle go into new products, they don't go into landfills or incinerators, so landfill space is conserved.

   6. Recycling Saves Money and Creates Jobs - The recycling process creates far more jobs than landfills or incinerators, and recycling can frequently be the least expensive waste management method for cities and towns.

Economic Benefits of Recycling

Several studies have shown that recycling related businesses have substantial economic development benefits.

    * A study of 10 states in the Northeast region found that more than 100,000 people are employed in firms that process recyclables or use them in manufacturing. The study also estimates that more than $7.2 billion in value is added to recyclables in the Northeast through processing and manufacturing.

    * A similar study of 13 states and territories in the Southeast found that nearly 140,000 people are employed by firms that process recyclables or use them in manufacturing. The value added to recyclables for that region was estimated at $18.5 billion.

    * North Carolina found in a 1995 study that businesses which collect, process and manufacture recyclables have nearly $1 billion in total estimated sales and 9,000 employees - that's in North Carolina alone.

    * A recent study by the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission found that recycling added about $18.5 billion in value to the economies of 12 Southern states and Puerto Rico in 1995.

Answer 7

Where I live, not the UK, we have a wastepaper collection once a week, a metal collection every two months. We pay for rubbish bags and have a communal bin for uncooked vegetable peelings and dead flowers and plants, for which we pay a small annual sum, this is also collected weekly.

Otherwise, every supermarket has a bottle and PET collection point and most have a collection point for tins and beer/soft drink cans.

How difficult is that? It works.