The Effects of Plastic on the Environment

Every year, enough plastic is thrown away to circle the Earth four times, and more plastic has been produced in the last 10 years than there was in the entire 20th century. I’ll let you do the calculations. Plastic has overrun our lives, and half of the plastic we use only gets used once and then it gets thrown out. We get that some plastic can’t be reused right then and there, but it can be recycled to be turned into something that can be reused. For example, instead of using a plastic bag and a plastic water bottle for lunch, replace them with a lunch box and a thermos, and you’d be surprised how much slower you’ll go through plastic bags. Around 500 billion plastic bags are used every year worldwide, and most of the time they don’t get reused or they start to pile up somewhere because they don’t get used enough. By trading them for reusable fabric shopping bags, you’re saving both time and money, because they can fit more items than a plastic bag can without breaking.

Recycling has grown over the years, but so has the production of plastic. In order for it to undo the several years that recycling wasn’t as popular it will have to continue growing, because it is showing improvement despite the high pollution numbers. If everyone switches from disposable plastic items to reusable ones and recycles the plastic that they don’t use, the environment and our wallets will continue to benefit.

Things You Might Not Know About Recycling

The world has become more aware of how our everyday lives can affect the environment, and recycling has become a well-known process all around the world. We all know that it’s beneficial, but there are some things that recycling is capable of that not everyone knows about. For example, it actually helps our employment rate, because for every job created in the waste industry, four more are made in the recycling industry. Recycling helps so much more than our ecosystem, and recycling programs costs less than waste programs, due to the need for landfills, incinerators, and more.

Environmental Benefits

It’s no secret that recycling paper saves trees, contributing to cleaner air, but did you know that just one glass bottle provides enough energy to light a light bulb for four hours? There’s a lot more power to recycling than some people realize. For example, just one ton of paper saves 17 trees, and it may not sound like very many trees, but one ton of paper also is equivalent to 9 barrels of oil, and that’s a significant difference. However, recycling benefits much more than just the environment.

Economic Benefits

On top of all of the jobs that the recycling industry creates, it also is great for the economy. Using recycled materials to make products means that we save quite a bit of money, and there’s less waste, meaning that everything is used to it’s maximum potential. It costs twice as much to make new aluminum than it does to recycle it and reuse it, and since recycling saves so much on oil, it will help prevent the U.S. from depending so much on foreign trade to obtain it. Recycling also benefits the economy by generating revenue through material sales and the increase in the market for recyclable materials.

The Recycling Industry

In order for recycling to stay environmentally beneficial, America actually exports some of it’s recyclable materials to countries like China so that way our landfills can shrink faster and other countries can take part in reusing materials and have an alternative to cutting down forests or digging into more mines. Products that are used world-wide are made with recycled materials, like a majority of cars today are made with recycled steel. Recycling has become a major part of daily life all around the world, and it’s a transforming task that will provide a clean environment and a great future for everyone.

Doing Your Part With Recycling

Recycling is an important part of everyday life. In fact, it is something that should become a habit no matter where one is - the park, at home, in the office, or out and about. Over the past hundred or so years, disposable items such as plastic bottles, cups, paper plates, paper napkins, and countless other throwaway items have come into existence. With these inventions have come an immense amount of pollution.

You can find this pollution in the form of fast food cups and trash bags on the side of the road, candy wrappers on sidewalks, and countless amounts of cardboard now being thrown into the dump. Instead of throwing items on the side of the road or leaving recyclable items in the garbage, we can do our part by collecting paper, plastics, cans, and aluminums to be re used by our community.

Businesses

It is important for businesses to do their part for the environment when it comes to being environmentally friendly and offering recycling. Thousands of sheets of paper, a number of plastics, and multiple soda cans are gone through on a daily basis in many companies. This is where business recycling comes into play. There are multiple companies that offer recycling bins, pickups, and disposals for businesses. Therefore, all you have to worry about is getting your recycling bin out on the street in time.

Shopping

Even grocery stores have begun to recycle their plastic grocery bags. Many families and shoppers now use reusable bags for their groceries. Not only are these bags more sturdy and fit more items, they can also be used over and over again. Did you know that in the UK and other parts of Europe that plastic shopping bags cost money? This aids in cutting down the amount of litter and keeping one use plastics out of the dump.

For more information on recycling, especially in the business world, visit the Compass Recycling website. They are a business recycling company located in Central Texas who help countless of companies with maintaining a greener world.

Recycling is a very important part of our world today because of the amount of plastics and paper that are used for machinery, accessories, and billions of other products. If you are a home or business, doing your part to recycle these items is of vital importance. By keeping paper, plastics, and other recyclable items out of the landfill, we are helping with preserving the environment for future generations. It is also valuable to reuse our resources that we already have, instead of pulling more natural resources from the earth.

In most areas, residential recycling is readily available. Once or twice a week, the recycling company will pick up a large bin of available recyclables. However, business recycling can be quite difficult since a majority of cities do not provide regular pickups. In cases like these, companies can turn towards a local business recycling industry. The cost of adding recycling to your business is usually very minimal, especially when considering what impact you are making on the environment.

Business Recycling

Business recycling is an area that is becoming more popular. Signing up and implementing this habit into your company’s rituals is quite easy, and you are able to choose the number of pickups, as well as choosing various sized recycling bins for retrieval. If you are a business that goes through quite a lot of paper, plastic, or cardboard on a daily basis, then you can request additional pickups.

Secure Document Disposal

If your company handles sensitive documents and needs secure document disposal as well as recycling services, then you can easily combine these two areas. After your secure documents have been properly destroyed, you will receive a certified receipt of destruction.

Tire Recycling

Business recycling does not just include the basics of paper, plastic, and aluminum. You can also obtain rebates for any scrap metals that are able to be recycled. Also, if you are a car shop, ask your nearest business recycling company about recycling tires. Melted tires can be reused as hot melt asphalt or even cut up to use as garden mulch to hold in water. Many artists will turn old tires into works of art such as furniture, playground additions, and even footwear.

There truly is a use, or reuse, for every item under the sun. It is up to us to do our part in making sure that recyclables make it to the proper location so that they can be properly sorted and processed for the next part of their journey. To learn more about business recycling and doing your part, visit Compass Recycling’s website.