To Recycle Or Not To Recycle?

Question

First, I decided that I would start recycling, then I decided against it, and now I'm on the fence. I've heard both good and bad things about recycling, and I have no idea who to believe. I've heard that it's more beneficial to the environment to not recycle paper, and that we have plenty of room for landfills. I can't make a decision. Can someone please enlighten me?

Answer 1

Are you kidding? Recycling is far more efficient.

Answer 2

Recycling is very important! Without recycling the landfills, that you think we have plenty of will be gone. Also, recycling paper is a good thing, because recycling paper, makes recycled paper which is cheaper than regular paper. Not to mention it means that we aren't cutting down as many tree as we are normally do, and we aren't using as much energy as we would when making new paper.

The same thing applies to glass and plastic, it is recycled, it can make new things and uses less energy to make. Whereas making a new product from scratch is much more costly in many ways.

Think of it this way, recycling is like baking a cake, you can buy the mix at the store, which is already prepared and make the cake adding only a few ingredients (recycled products turned into new products). Or you can make a cake from scratch which uses more ingredients and is more costly than buying something that is already been prepared (new product made from scratch).

Furthermore, there are many companies that will come and pick up your recycling goods for free, so what's stopping anyone from recycling?

Answer 3

Recycling is very important. Without recycling we would not have as cheap of goods as we do. Many products are recycled without the consumer knowing.

Aluminum especially is profitable to recycle. Where I live they are paying $0.45 per pound! It doesn't seem like much, but it adds up.

I would much rather recycle paper to be made into new paper than have them cutting down trees all the time to make paper.

There aren't many bad things about recycling that I have heard. You might check your sources on that. I know I wouldn't want a landfill near me, and the only way to prevent that is to reduce our inputs to the landfills.

Answer 4

Hi
True is America is a big landscape, and a nice, too. I think I do not like landfills all over. Mostly a landfill is wasting of resources.
1. Leftovers from food, grass cut, trees cut and so on can be produced to new soil. Farmer and Garden owner can use that to better up there soil. That is a good way to have new work and to reduce landfills.
2. Paper - Paper is wood. Wood needs a long time of growing. And Paper can be reused in the production of new products. In Germany about 80 % of the paper products are recycled more than 4 times.
3. Tin cans/Metal - melting it and you have a new product
4. Glas - reduce it to granulat, melt it and you can produce a new glas.
Recycling has produced a lot of work in Germany - You need workers to collect - to seperate - to prozess to produce a new item.
But you need that network to recycle positive.
But do you know where the next papermill is. If yes, collect your paper, and sell it direct to the papermill. sort the paper and keep it clean. Make some money.

Answer 5

Where do you live? Where does your recycling go?

In a study of landfills, William Rathje found out that paper takes up 40% of the space in landfills (diapers take up only 2%). So if you want to reduce your impact in landfills, recycling your paper is the best place to start. Every bit of paper that is recycled means less trees that need to get cut down. Recycled paper is used for making office paper, newspaper, and especially bathroom tissue.

It's crazy not to recycle aluminum. Making cans from recycled aluminums is a lot cheaper than making them from virigin ore, so that's why aluminum recycling is highly lucrative, and you will always find someone willing to give your cans a good home.

Cardboard also contains fibers that are easy to re-use, so it is also easy to find someone to take your cardboard.

If recycling is easy in your area, certainly you should recycle cans, glass, and plastics as well, since at the very least, recycling these items will cut down on landfill requirements. After all, when all the current landfills are full, would you want a new one placed in your backyard?

Answer 6

Recycling is more expensive than its benefits. At our current level of technology, the reduction and reuse of old materials is inefficient and costly. Some things, like metals, are easy to recycle, and costs far less to reuse in new products than mining new materials. However, for most things, recycling results in the use of more energy and thus makes more pollutants. The bottom line is, it costs more (ecologically and economically) to recycle almost anything. It's not like fossil fuels can be recycled, right?

It is true that we have more than adequate space to hold all our garbage. It is estimated that a landfill built somewhere in the middle of nowhere (this place doesn't really exist) that measures 16 miles on each side would hold the entire waste of the entire country for the next century. Even the landfills that do exist are well maintained, allowing as much reclamation of the land as possible. Many are used as parks, without anyone knowing the wiser - nor any risk to the environment.

The only drawback is that the recycling craze has reached such a furvor in this country that city municipal systems have created recycling programs in each town, effectively taking away your choice to recycle or not. The program is already in place, you are already paying for it, so you might as well use it. At least, that's the theory. Still, each piece of recycling you place in those bins costs more energy to process than buying a brand new piece of material and throwing the old one away. We can only hope that the technology will improve to a degree that we will become more efficient - on both sides of the equation. The only way to do that is to create a demand.

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm arguing against reusing and reducing waste - that's sound judgment regardless.

Answer 7

Ultimately we all recycle the things we use. We can reuse the materials by reclaiming them, such as aluminum cans, glass, plastics. Even if we throw all of our trash in the back yard, it breaks down over time, waiting to be used again. Although this method is cheap, just look at all of the land fills. It does not utilize the materials available, and already processed.
Everything is recycled. All of that oil we are running out of, becomes CO2, that feeds the plants that release the O2 as a waste product. We breath this in and return the carbon atom to the oxygen.
Nature is the ultimate recycle machine.

Answer 8

Recycle! RECYCLE! RECYCLE! There are not enough room in landfills, it saves time and energy, and it is easy! Most cities provide recycle bins along with garbage cans so it really takes no effort. If you don't have that program in your city then take them to a recycle center...or do what I do when I don't have time to go to the center...I give away my recyclables to the homeless that way I recycle and the homeless make a profit from it.

Answer 9

The thought of seeing all our junk and waste in a landfill is appalling to me. That same hillside or valley could be just that, and not a holder of our waste.
I've heard nothing bad about recycling. It's also the law in many places. Recycling is free to drop off, and you have to pay to get rid of garbage. I'd be interested to know the bad things about it.
Get off the fence and get your recycleables out of the house:)

Answer 10

NIBMY! Have you ever heard people say, "Sure, but Not In My Back Yard" (NIMBY)?? It's very hard to find places to put landfills, plus we are worried about what happens to the stuff as it degrades and liquid contaniments leach out into the soil or water table if it isn't constructed properly.

The technology we use to recylce is not perfect, and not as cheap as it is to make new items, however, this is just thinking in the short term. For example, there's not a shortage of sand to make glass. But, only through demand for recylcling and demand for recycled products will we see improvements in the process and economics of recycling.

Please recycle!

Answer 11

At some point we will run out of room for landfills--I mean, do you want your great-grandchildren to be living on top of one? And, look at it this way: almost no one obeys the "rules" on the garbage cans about what NOT to put in them, so you've got to know that a lot of stuff in a landfill is poisonous and/or dangerous to the environment.

We are a very, v ery wasteful society, and anything you can do to get the most use out of any resource is a good thing. (OOOpps! Sorry , I sounded like Martha S. there for a minute.)