Are We Too Lazy To Recycle?

There is a lot of very emotive language used in the debate over recycling – as indeed there is over any environmental issue. One side will accuse the other of being too lazy and selfish to recycle, and the other will accuse the first of being guilt-tripped and gullible for falling for something that basically gives them a clear conscience for a short spell of time. The question does need to be asked; are we lazy and selfish? Are we easily guilt-tripped? Or should both sides calm down and get on with our lives?

It may not be selfish laziness that prevents people from recycling, but there is probably more that everyone could do to avoid the very real and tangible problems that are caused by a lack of recycling. It cannot be denied that recycling saves a lot in terms of the energy that goes into manufacturing, as well as the money that that energy costs to make and the resources – many of which are natural and exhaustible – which are required for the process.

Is it idealistic, naïve and bone-headed to argue the case for recycling? Some people might say it is, but when you look at the facts it makes a lot of sense to prepare for a future when we cannot rely on non-renewable forms of energy, by making sure that we use the alternatives as far as is practical in this day and age. If it takes a little bit longer to separate the garbage, what is that when set against the likely far greater expense of paying for repairs on the fly?
Our Addiction To Disposable

We as human beings have an alarming tendency to just throw things away when we’re finished with them. When you think about it, this tendency is a little big pig-headed. We can easily afford to keep disposing of things, can’t we? So what is the problem? Well, when you think about it, the problem is that things don’t just magically disappear when they aren’t being used. When we throw things in the trash, they end up in a landfill decomposing, usually quite slowly.

There is a fairly common response to this, and it is to ignore it. Many people have an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude to waste disposal. If we can’t see it, it is not there, right? Except it is. And although it may sound like the desperate cries of a hippy, we do only have one planet and we just cannot keep throwing stuff away and burying it when we’re finished with it. Garbage doesn’t decompose in the blink of an eye, and much of what we throw away will take hundreds of years to biodegrade. When you think of the rate at which we throw things away, that adds up to a headache.

So why do we keep throwing our garbage away? Some of it, it’s fair to say, cannot be recycled, but what about the rest? The plastic bottles could be recycled, the paper could be recycled and so could many of the gadgets we just throw away. We dispose of that stuff because it is easier. What kind of sense does that make?

Plastic Bags – The Silent Killers

If you had said half a century ago that one of the greatest threats to our environment over the next century would come from plastic bags, you would have been laughed at and told to stop smoking whatever it was you were smoking. Yet these days, people are coming to that conclusion. It is a little known fact that, even in a country which often uses paper bags where others use plastic, Americans throw away a startling 100 billion plastic bags every year. Of those, estimates as to how many are recycled range between one and three per cent.

Now, the humble plastic bag may seem innocuous. However, consider that every year thousands of birds and marine mammals are killed through choking or strangulation by plastic bags. That is a fact – as is the information that plastic bags are not biodegradable, and can take a millennium to break down (and even when they do, they pollute the soil and water in which they lie. Then consider the fact that the production of plastic bags requires the use of incredible amounts of petroleum – a scarce natural resource.

If you get plastic bags when you do your grocery shopping, or any other shopping for that matter, think about whether you need to throw them away. Is there a chance that they could be better used to wrap packed lunches, serve as household storage, or be used to carry other things around – like books to college? If not, they can certainly be recycled. It is much better to do any of these things than to throw them away.

Talking Around A Recycling Skeptic

Although there is a compelling amount of evidence that most of what the environmental scientists have been telling us for years is true, there is no shortage of skepticism around the major environmental issues facing us. There are plenty of people who have made their refusal to recycle into a political stance. Not only do they not wish to recycle, they wish to pull the rug from under anyone who does. They argue that it actually takes more energy to recycle than it does to dispose of recyclable garbage in a landfill. Do they have a point?

The answer, increasingly, is no. The city of New York, early in this millennium, did once find that the municipal recycling programs were actually losing money instead of saving it, and closed down the programs. Shortly thereafter, they found that landfill space was at a premium and they had to pay for out-of-state landfill. Then they reinstated their recycling programs, having found that they were able to do it in a more cost-efficient manner. It may once have cost a lot of money and required a lot of energy, but as time has passed, recycling has become more efficient.

The truth is that, even if we were to accept that it was inefficient to recycle in the first instance (it is not), the process of recycling takes a lot of the pressure off of manufacturing industries, which have to spend a lot of money to make the materials from scratch. A larger cost up front, if that were the case (and it is not), at least saved the expense further along the line. As this becomes more widely accepted, the skeptics will find they have fewer and fewer allies.

Old Cell Phone, New Cell Phone

When the first cell phones came into existence, they were few in number and it would have been difficult to imagine just how commonplace they would become. These days, even people who had sworn never to buy a cell phone will have one – for sending text messages or even just for emergencies. What no-one foresaw was that most people would buy a new cell phone on average once a year – and in some cases, more frequently.

The result of this is that all of a sudden there are people who have several phones and no practical use for any more than a couple of them. it is not uncommon for people to just throw the old phones away – but this is not a good idea. A cell phone is made up of several parts – a plastic fascia, an LCD screen, a battery and more. These will take forever to decompose – and it would be a much better idea to take part in one of the many programs which take your old cell off you (sometimes in return for cash) and set about re-tooling it for a life as someone else’s phone.

This is a good alternative to the tendency that so many of us have, to just throw something away when we are done with it. Some phone recycling programs are done for charity, and allow people who could not otherwise afford a cell phone to have one, allowing them to have something which, as more and more of us are realizing, is often a necessity.

Recycling You Can Do Yourself

Recycling is encompassed in most people’s minds as the trip to the recycling bins at the end of their garden, at a municipal tip or in another public place. One way or another, the process of recycling is considered to take time and effort, and this is many people’s reason for not doing it. However, there is plenty you can do to recycle that does not take any more effort than just continuing to do what you are doing anyway. Here are a few examples.

Re-using plastic bags: Instead of throwing plastic bags in the trash when they have been used to transport goods home, they can be kept and used for a variety of purposes – from carrying personal belongings around, to storage around the house. The same thing can be done with cardboard boxes and plastic food containers and bottles.
Composting: Many items, when they have served their useful purpose around the home, can be added to a compost heap which can be used to fertilize a garden. Cardboard and newspaper, although they decompose slowly, will decompose.
Passing It On: You may find that you have no more use for household furnishings or clothes, etcetera. There are, however, several alternatives to just throwing them out. Second-hand stores, and the phenomenon of “free-cycling”, where people with old equipment that they no longer need hand it on to people who can use it, are excellent alternatives.

The above are just some examples of how you can make further use from things that you have judged to have come to the end of their usefulness.

Why Should I Recycle Plastics?

Imagine your weekly grocery shop. Put yourself in the place where you do that shop and mentally walk around the store. Now, as you are doing this, think of all of the items you pick up that are either made from or stored in plastic. When you consider the amount of plastic that is used by domestic and industrial customers in the course of a year, it adds up to a lot. Soda bottles and yogurt pots. Trash bags and detergent bottles. Just about anything you might ever buy for a baby – all of it is either made from or packaged in plastic.

Sooner or later, the containers or the items will become useless and need to be disposed of. In most cases, sooner – and as a result, the average household throws out enough plastic to make up about 12% of all the waste disposed of in the course of a year. That is a truly staggering amount.

If you recycle plastic instead of simply dumping it, it is not just a matter of stopping the plastic from entering landfill and keeping it from degrading the environment. An interesting statistic is that the production of new plastic accounts for 4% of the energy consumed in the United States in the course of a year – which is a lot of energy. If, however, plastic is simply recycled, the amount of energy required is considerably less.

All of this energy costs money to produce, and uses up valuable natural and expensive manufactured resources. Instead of this, why not just recycle? It doesn’t cost you anything and it makes life easier on everyone.

Why Recycling Is Important

Although there is a lot of cynicism directed against the environmentalist movement, this does not stop an awful lot of people from recycling. You don’t need to be an environmentalist to care about recycling, after all. Although it is one of the major green issues, recycling is about a lot more than just keeping the world clean and thriving. Considering how much garbage we create and throw out in this day and age, recycling is simply a sane response to a problem that is at risk of going insane.

When we finish with plastic or glass bottles, food containers, newspapers and magazines, it is really no effort to put them separately from the rest of our garbage and dispose of them in the relevant recycling bin. For those who wonder why they should bother, it is worth considering that when garbage is disposed of, it gets placed into a landfill. When in landfills, garbage is compacted down into as small a space as possible – the intention is that it will biodegrade – but this takes a long time. In the case of plastic bottles, it can take hundreds of years.

Imagine how many plastic bottles we will use over the course of a year alone. Without recycling, this will add up to enough to fill most of the world’s landfills in one fell swoop. You don’t need to be an environmentalist to see why recycling them instead of just throwing them away makes sense. It’s simply a case of keeping the world from becoming inhabitable.

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