what is the importance of recycling?

Question

this is for a school project.... I MUST KNOW

Answer 1

Go watch the magic school bus episode on recycling.

Answer 2

i heard a commercial a while ago it sayd recycling a glass bottle makes a nuf power to run your tv for an hour dont know if that helps

Answer 3

recycling reduces waste and conserves natural resources

Answer 4

we live on the island earth. resources as limitless as it seems, is an illusion.recycling allows us to extend the use of our resources. gabe

Answer 5

Recycling is the reprocessing of materials into new products. Recycling prevents useful material resources being wasted, reduces the consumption of raw materials and reduces energy usage, and hence greenhouse gas emissions, compared to virgin production.[1] Recycling is a key concept of modern waste management and is the third component of the waste hierarchy.

Recyclable materials, also called "recyclables" or "recyclates", may originate from a wide range of sources including the home and industry. They include glass, paper, aluminium, asphalt, iron, textiles and plastics. Biodegradable waste, such as food waste or garden waste, is also recyclable with the assistance of microorganisms through composting or anaerobic digestion.

Recyclates need to be sorted and separated into material types. Contamination of the recylates with other materials must be prevented to increase the recyclates value and facilitate easier reprocessing for the ultimate recycling facility. This sorting can be performed either by the producer of the waste or within semi or fully-automated materials recovery facilities.

There are two common household methods of helping increase recycling. Firstly kerbside collection (US: curbside collection) is where consumers leave presorted materials for recycling at the front of their property, typicially in boxes or sacks to be collected by a recycling vehicle. Alternatively, with a "bring system", the householder may take the materials to recycling banks or civic amenity centres where recyclates are placed into recycling bins based on the type of material.

Recycling does not include reuse where items retain their existing form for other purposes without the need for reprocessing.


Recycling has been a common practice throughout human history. In pre-industrial times, scrap made of bronze and other precious metals was collected in Europe and melted down for perpetual reuse, and in Britain dust and ash from wood and coal fires was downcycled as a base material in brickmaking. The main driver for these types of recycling was the economic advantage of obtaining recycled feedstock instead of acquiring virgin material, as well as a lack of public waste removal in ever more-populated sites.

Paper recycling began in Britain in 1921, when the British Waste Paper Association was established to encourage trade in waste paper recycling.

Resource shortages caused by the world wars, and other such world changing occurances greatly encouraged recycling. Massive government promotion campaigns were carried out in World War II in every country involved in the war, urging citizens to donate metals and conserve fibre, as a matter of significant patriotic importance. Resource conservation programs established during the war were continued in some countries without an abundance of natural resources, such as Japan, after the war ended.

In the USA, the next big investment in recycling occurred in the 1970s, due to rising energy costs (recycling aluminium uses only 5% of the energy required by virgin production; glass, paper and metals have less dramatic but very significant energy savings when recycled feedstock is used). The passage of the Clean Water Act of 1977 in the USA created strong demand for bleached paper (office paper whose fibre has already been bleached white increased in value as water effluent became more expensive).

In 1973, the city of Berkeley, California began one of the first curbside collection programs with monthly pick ups of newspapers from residences. Since then several countries have started and expanded various doorstep collection schemes.

One event that initiated recycling efforts occurred in 1989 when the city of Berkeley, California, banned the use of polystyrene packaging for keeping McDonald's hamburgers warm. One effect of this ban was to raise the shiza of management at Dow Chemical, the world's largest manufacturer of polystyrene, which led to the first major effort to show that plastics can be recycled. By 1999, there were 1,677 companies in the USA alone involved in the post-consumer plastics recycling business.


One of the main benefits of recycling comes from reducing the amount of new material required. In theory, recycling allows a material to be continually reused for the same purpose, and in many cases this theory holds true, most notably in the recycling of metals and glass.

Since less raw material is required, recycling creates further benefits for materials where cost of the initial extraction or production is high—either economically, socially or environmentally. The recycling of aluminium, for example, saves 95% of the CO2 emissions—an environmentally harmful greenhouse gas—compared to refining new metal.

Concerns about limited resources such as raw materials and land space for disposal of waste have increased the importance of recycling. However maximum environmental benefit is gained by reducing the amount of waste produced, and reusing items in their current form, for example refilling bottles. All recycling techniques consume energy, for transportation and processing, and some also use considerable amounts of water. Both of these resources have an environmental impact which is why campaigners use the slogan "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" to indicate the preferred order for waste management in the waste hierarchy.

Paper can only be recycled a finite number of times due to the shortening of paper fibres making the material less versatile. Often it will be mixed with a quantity of virgin material. This is referred to as downcycling. This does not however exclude the material from being used in other processes such as composting or anaerobic digestion, where further value can be extracted from the material in the form of compost or biogas.

There may also be drawbacks with the collection methods associated with recycling. Increasing collections of separated wastes adds to vehicle movements and the production of carbon dioxide. This may be negated however by centralised facilities such as some advanced material recovery facilities of mechanical biological treatment systems for the separation of mixed wastes.

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