Why Recycling is Important

 Recycle. That word is everywhere. It’s on the back of your Coca-Cola bottle, on the front of your plastic shopping bag, and printed somewhere along most cardboard boxes. Everywhere you look, you see those 3 little arrows in the shape of a triangle reminding you to recycle. Even liquor bottles request you recycle them after you are finished with it! But what does it really mean to recycle? What are the financial impacts? What are the environmental impacts? How is throwing that plastic bottle into a recycling bin really helping save the environment? To learn more about the economic impact of recycling  

What is Recycling?

         First, lets start with a basic description of what recycling is. Recycling refers to collecting used materials, or waste, and reprocessing them. In this process, these used materials are sorted and processed as ‘raw materials’ for the production of new products (1). So by recycling that plastic water bottle instead of throwing it away, you are giving it the potential to be turned into many different products, rather than sit in a landfill for hundreds of years.

What are the benefits?

         There are many other added benefits to recycling. For example, recycling one pound of plastic bottles can save up to 12,000 BTU’s of heat energy (3). Because of this, recycling helps in preventing global climate change by minimizing the energy spent on industrial production (1). Recycling also saves landfill space, reduces pollution, and saves natural resources.

The recycling industry in Georgia

         Now that you know the basics of recycling, let’s take it down to a smaller scale and look at Georgia’s recycling. Georgia is considered to have one of the strongest infrastructures in the nation for recovery and end use of recyclables (4). This basically means that the recycled goods in Georgia can be used within the state or in very close proximity of the state borders for the re-manufacturing of goods containing recycled content (5).

 For starters, Georgia’s paper industry recycles almost 8 percent of all paper consumed in the United States. In addition, the paper mills use 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than they do making paper from virgin timber (5). As far as beverage containers go, one-third of all plastic beverage bottles recycled in the North America are recycled in Georgia and are turned into carpet. Georgia also has one of the largest aluminum recyclers in the world (5). 

          Even though Georgia is on the right track with recycling, there is still a lot of work to be done. Annually in Georgia, Georgians throw away an estimated 1.9 million tons of paper, 1 million tons of plastic, 360,000 tons of metal and 240,000 tons of glass (5). That is over 3.5 million tons of wasted resources every year. If just half of that 3.5 million tons of aluminum, paper, glass and plastic would have been recycled instead of being wasted, Georgia would be able to conserve 4 percent of the total energy consumed annually within the state (the equivalent of the transportation energy consumed by over 1 million Georgians each year) as well as conserve over 7 million barrels of oil (5).

          Now lets take it down one more notch – to you. What difference can you make by recycling? Recycling 1 glass bottle will save enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours. Recycling 1 aluminum can will run a computer for 3 hours. Recycling 1 soft drink bottle will save enough energy to run a television for 1.5 hours. Every small step you take towards recycling will make a big impact on our earth.

1. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/why-is-recycling-important.html

2. http://earth911.com/recycling/plastic/plastic-bottles/facts-about-plastic-bottles/

3. http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Happens-When-You-Recycle?&id=1953531

4. http://www.georgiarecycles.org/homefolder/recycling-economic-impact

5. http://www.georgiarecycles.org/uploads/DL/B8/DLB8L8JjQGnpni5Y4OYN7A/GRC-FactCard-09.pdf