Why is Recycling Important

As we go through our bins sorting rubbish into recycling piles, many people wonder what the benefits of recycling actually are. There are a few key areas where recycling has a particular impact and are important.

Keeping Rubbish Out of Landfills

One important feature of recycling is that it helps keep rubbish out of landfill sites. Landfill sites store all kinds of waste and rubbish, however much of this waste is not biodegradable, meaning that it will stay in its existing form in the landfill site for many years to come – perhaps many hundreds of years to come. This means that the landfill sites become full and that new sites need to be found.

An alternative to building new landfill sites and filling the country up with waste is to reuse whatever is suitable, meaning that only the bear essentials need to be put into landfills.

There are often noxious gases and chemicals released from decomposing materials at landfill sites. This can cause air pollution and some of the gases may be greenhouse gases that have far reaching global effects. Reducing the amount of waste will help control gases generated. This will become increasingly important in the future and action now will have long lasting benefits.

Save Energy

Another key reason why recycling is important is that it often saves energy. For most items, it takes less energy to process the recycled materials than it does to use virgin materials. For instance, it takes significantly less energy to recycle paper than it does to create paper from new woodland.

The fact that energy is saved in many cases has many benefits.

• It means that energy from non-renewable resources is protected and saved for future generations.
• The money saved through the use of less energy means more competitively priced goods.
• In many instances there will be less pollution and emissions as less energy is used.
• The manufacturing cycle can be greatly reduced. Taking paper as an example, the whole wood growth time lag is removed from the manufacturing process.

Save Money

One important feature of recycling that affects us all is the fact it can save money! The waste processing costs incurred by waste management companies is reduced, the cost of manufacture are reduced and other incidental costs can be reduced, meaning that cost savings are passed on to the consumer.

Household recycling initiatives such as recycling kitchen waste into compost also helps save money as this reduces the need to buy compost from garden stores.

Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose!

Recycling isn’t just about separating your waste into different bins. There is so much more that we can be doing! We are generally now said to be living in a ‘throw away’ culture. There are constantly new and improved versions of products being developed, this year's ‘next big thing’ being marketed or the latest ‘must have’ item hitting the shop shelves with a great fanfare.

Being green doesn’t mean that we all have to forgo new items, but perhaps we could take a better look at what happens to the old items. Many items that might otherwise go into the waste can find a new lease on life somewhere. Many fully working items find their way into the waste system and some councils have systems for taking these out and passing them on. Many councils don’t, however, and furniture, working appliances and other perfectly working goods get put into landfills.

One Man’s Waste is Another Man’s Treasure

There are some excellent ways to recycle your unwanted goods.

Sell - Of course it is possible to sell them through websites such as eBay.com. This is a useful way to dispose of you unwanted goods and make a few pennies or dollars (although when selling old goods, do make sure your descriptions are accurate to avoid disappointment).

Free - There are other exciting initiatives that offer a great way to both pass unwanted goods on and also to source new items. An example of this is FreeCycle.org, which is an international service that allows users to post onto their area site details of unwanted goods that other users can come and collect.

Charity - There are some charities that work on behalf of certain disadvantaged groups and are always on the look out for reasonable quality used goods. Some charities who work on behalf of young families, for instance, seek good clean baby clothes.

Why is Recycling Important – Further Reading

There is a lot of good quality information about recycling available on the Internet. Here are a few excellent websites:

• OneClimate.net - lots of information about green living in general
• EPA.gov - information about recycling, including a game for children
• Earth911.org - information about different aspects of recycling

Recycling is one of the few green initiatives that we can all participate in with a minimum of effort, yet it has far reaching and long lasting benefits.