Recycling

Recycling Paper

Paper is in every aspect of our lives. We may not even think of all the ways we use paper, such a tissue, paper towels, mail, baby diaper, newspaper, boxes, cartons, and containers. Packaging for products is 41% of all paper use worldwide according to the Bureau of International Recycling. We use paper at work and school to write on it, or read the pages of books. The United States use 700 pounds of paper per person; worldwide each person uses 110 pounds annually. It is imperative that we understand that paper is a very integral part of our lives, and then learn ways to recycle paper.

Recycling paper is obviously good for trees, because 35% of all trees worldwide that are cut down each year to make into paper. Most companies that mill paper reforest, but trees can grow as fast as our use of paper. Recycling paper saves energy too. The Bureau of International Recycling claims that recycling paper instead of new trees, saves 64% of fossil fuel use. Recycling one ton of paper, can save enough electric to fuel a house for a year. Another benefit of recycling paper is to reduce paper in landfills, 35% of landfill waste is paper that could have been recycled.

Today, paper is made from trees mostly grown in working forests and from recovered paper. Recycling has always been a part of paper making. When you recycle your used paper, paper mills will use it to make new paper products. 36% of the fiber used to make paper or paper products come from recycling in the United States, although internationally 50% of all paper is made from recycled paper.

Facts About Recycling Plastic

Keeping the Earth healthy, being Green and eco-friendly have become a huge part of the world due to the spot light of global warming with climate and weather changes. One of the easiest and least expensive ways to help the Earth is by recycling plastic.

Every day hundreds of plastic containers and bottles are thrown in the trash instead of recycle bins or thrown in the street or on the ground. During last year’s Keep America Beautiful campaign, volunteers collected about 189 million plastic bottles and containers left on the road or ground and recycled them.

Recycling plastic is a definite plus for the environment; about one ton of recycled plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill. A lot more than most recyclable items. A lot of major grocery stores will recycle your plastic bags and plastic wraps as well for you; a lot of them have set up collection agencies through their stores to encourage the act of recycling. Recycling a piece of plastic doesn’t seem like much, but it has a huge impact on your community and throughout the world. It only takes a few seconds of your time to place something in the recycle bin rather than the trash. Most recreational areas and parks nowadays provide some form of recycling as an alternative outlet to the common trash bin.

The average plastic is 70 percent natural gas, allowing the form to be broken down easily and reused. So by recycling you are helping the environment reuse its natural resources for a common good. Make a difference, recycle.

The Advantage of Recycling

Today, the hip thing to do is “be green”, but people all around the world that are trying to save the earth seem to be forgetting the most important thing of them all. They drive hybrids, save water, and use energy saving light bulbs, but you never hear people talk about recycling! Recycling has been around for many years now, but if used and done more now than ever, the world would benefit from it so greatly and drastically, that we may be able to really slow down the march of global warming.

Recycling is actually much easier than people make it sound. In fact, it is as easy as placing items in a bin, literally! Instead of throwing away your trash into a trash can so wastefully, instead place them into a recycling bin. You can have a bin for just about any item such as plastic, metal, glass, tin, paper, and even compost such as banana peels and apple cores.

If you recycle, you are also saving so much space and are saving so much more fresh oxygen for us to breath on the earth. When we just throw items away without recycling them, they go to a dump site and pile up upon other trash piles hundreds of feet high, and miles long for sometimes years until finally they are burned. The smoke from the burned garbage goes all over the world, polluting our air. But when you recycle, the items are reused, renewed, and of course, recycled!

Improving Recycling Rates

Many people are looking for ways to improve our recycling rates. The main areas that need to be addressed to accomplish this are education, marketing, simplification, and regular communication. When these efforts are combined residents become more willing to participate in recycling because the rules are clear and compliance is easily maintained. When communities fail to address these issues, even those who are honestly committed to the process find themselves questioning the process when they can not understand the rules that govern the process.

Education is the key to any process. However, for education to be successful it needs to be combined with a good marketing campaign. Often those who are seeking to increase recycling in a community fail to seek the help of good marketing consultants. They end up preaching to the choir. The audience they need to reach is ignored, and they continue to reach the audience who already is in compliance with recycling. The change that needs to occur is to identify the audience that is underperforming and find a way to positively market the idea to that audience. I have found trying to adjust people’s thinking to this reality is challenging. They continue to market recycling in the same method they always have and wonder why the results are dismal. The clear answer is that the target audience is hearing the message but they already are responding and their rate remains steady. There has not been a drop, so in that sense the marketing has not been a complete failure. However, marketing campaigns have completely failed to reach the target audience of residents not in compliance with the recycling regulations. Until the marketing and education campaigns match the target audience, do not expect to see a change in rates.

Two other important areas to target are simplicity and communication. When cities and towns constantly change the rules without providing any communication regarding the alterations to the recycling rules, even hard core proponents get frustrated. You can only imagine the impact on the less committed. The more complicated the cities and towns make the rules, the lower the levels of compliance one can reasonably expect. If raising the recycling rates is the goal, simplify, communicate and effectively market your education campaign.

« Previous Page