Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: What has the world come to?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: What has the world come to?

Garbage scattered across the ground. Source: Anthony John West

What if everyone in the world stopped recycling? Imagine walking down the streets and there being piles and stenches of rotting garbage. The ocean is being polluted with plastic waste and the air is contaminated with greenhouse gases. People today are throwing soda cans into the trash without any care in the world. But what they don’t know is that they are causing multiple disasters that is causing the world to slowly deteriorate. If you’re one of those people who walks past recyclable materials on the ground, you are one of the many factors that affect the environment. From the article TitleMax it states “Collectively, out of the 254 million tons of trash Americans can produce in one year, we recycle about 34.3 percent of it.” This goes to show that recycling alone takes about less than half of our trash waste than it should be. Recycling should become highly encouraged, because it avoids pollution by decreasing the collection between basic materials, creates jobs for people in the recycling industry, and saves energy from the manufacturing of materials.
People tend to forget or ignore the reasons of why the environment is in such crucial danger. When one morning they walk outside and notice the piles of disposable waste on the street and toxic smells, they will soon realize what the world has come to. The poisonous and toxic substances contaminating the air is pollution. Most people do not realize the harmful actions they caused to create pollution. Pollution can be prevented just by recycling. This is because the greenhouse gases would be less likely to happen and therefore less gases and oils are released into the atmosphere. From the article Boulder County it states “Recycling helps to reduce the pollution caused by the extraction and processing of virgin materials.'' With pollution, the environments for humans, water, and air are being contaminated with unhealthy substances that will make the environment harder to live in.

Recycling not only helps the environment but can also help the economy. A majority of people's lives are dedicated to saving the environment. They spend hours or even days cleaning the waste from the ground and disposing of them. Recycling can help create more jobs for people who believe in helping the environment. Not only can they get jobs by going outside and dispose of the materials, but people can also gain jobs in the manufacturing business. After materials are collected from locations, they are sent to a factory where they are sorted by the product they are made out of, thus creating jobs for people. In the article EcoCycle it states “By improving our national recycling rate to 75% by 2030, the U.S. could create 1.1 million new jobs.” This article acknowledges that the more recycling people do, the more jobs that it creates for people in the environment. By creating more jobs, more people can get involved in the community to help save their surroundings. The remains of material can be used in other manufacturer businesses. In fact, recycling can create more jobs than disposing and burning of the materials.

One of the many reasons people recycle is to simply save the environment, but what they do not know is that they are reducing the amount of energy from manufacturing materials. By exporting and converting usable materials causes much more energy than the manufacturing. By saving energy, it makes living in the environment much easier for people and animals. People depend on energy for living and functioning. Without energy, resources will be limited and survival will be almost unimaginable. A way to save energy is by recycling. Recycling’s process uses much less energy by the compounding of materials in factories because the usable materials are easily processed. Although that saving energy results in what materials are being processed, ultimately all recycling business save energy. From the article AGI it states “For many commonly recycled products, the energy savings also help to make recycling cheaper than extracting and processing raw resources.” This states that just by recycling, money will be saved and used for more reasonable circumstances rather than the destruction of materials.

Before and after recycling. Source: Facebook

Ultimately recycling can result in a better and healthy environment for people. By recycling, pollution will decrease and reduce the amount of harmful gases in the air. Recycling can create jobs for people in the facilities and make the community more involved in environmental activities. The energy from the recycling will be conserved and create better elements of life. Recycling is one of the best ways to make a positive impact on nature. It is essential to start recycling so that harmful substances are not released into the environment. A helpful way to remember recycling to prevent unhealthy substances is by the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This means to reduce the amount of materials in the natural environment. Reuse stands for reusing the item in a same or different way and recycle stands for taking the used materials and using it as new. So the next time you see waste in the environment, think of the ways your small step of picking it up will affect the world around you.

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https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/how-does-recycling-save-ener

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"Reduce, Reuse & Recycle - Boulder County."

https://www.bouldercounty.org/environment/recycle/reduce-reuse-recycle/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2019.

"The Trash One Person Produces in One Year - TitleMax."

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/trash-one-person-produces-year/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2019.

"Zero Waste Creates Jobs - Eco-Cycle."

https://www.ecocycle.org/zerowaste/jobs. Accessed 22 Oct. 2019.

"Solving Microplastic Pollution Means Reducing, Recycling." 12 Nov. 2018, 

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