Recycling tips
- It has been suggested that if 100,000 people who currently don’t recycle began to do so, they would collectively reduce CO2 emissions by 42,000 tons a year. As an added benefit, recycling reduces pollution and saves natural resources, including precious trees that absorb CO2. To learn how to recycle just about anything in the United States, visit Earth 911
- Landfill produces leachates and synthetic chemicals which pollute the water. It also creates 40% of UK greenhouse gas emissions via methane. All the more reason to reduce your waste.
- When it comes to recycling, remember 'the three Rs': first Reduce, then Re-use and finally Recycle.
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General recycling tips
- Join your local Freecycle Network™: One person's trash can truly be another's treasure!
Types of recycling
Please add a category if your tips doesn't fit into any of the below!
Why Recycle?
The average American throws away seven and a half pounds of garbage each day! That adds up to a whole lot of garbage, and people began to worry that they would run out of places where they could build new landfills. Besides, most people don't want a landfill or incinerator in their community because of the noise, smell, and risk of pollution. What can be done with all of this garbage? Part of the answer is recycling.
Not only does recycling mean that less garbage ends up in landfills, it also means less damage to the environment. Because materials are being recycled, fewer natural resources have to be taken from the earth. Also, less energy is needed to make new products from recycled materials. For example, making soda cans from recycled cans uses 95 percent less energy than using aluminum (a metal used to make cans) from a mine. If you recycled one soda can, it would save enough energy to run your television for three hours!
Glass is another material that can be recycled. It is very special in that it can be recycled again and again without losing any of its quality. Paper is often recycled, too. After it is recycled several times, some of its quality is lost, but it is then used to make insulation materials for buildings. Plastic can also be recycled. One company specializes in making fleece jackets from plastic soda bottles! It takes about 25 bottles to make one jacket.
External Links
- See The WSWMD Green pages for a comprehensive list of information on how to handle disposal of almost anything.
- See 25 tips on how to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
- Also see Recycling Tips
