This paper includes conclusive research about the effects of overflowing landfills and how to reduce these problems through efficient recycling. Environmental and economic issues concerning the overuse of landfills are discussed as well as methods to prevent these issues from getting out of hand.
Benefits of Recycling
Our trash is something we don't think about very often, but it is a major issue for humanity to deal with. Where do we put it? How do we manage it properly without it having damaging effects on the environment? How much of it is actually trash, and how much can we recycle and reuse? These are some of the major questions we must answer. Recycling all the materials we can is one of the best solutions. Recycling reusable materials such as plastic, glass, and aluminum can solve many of the problems that the growing amount of trash causes.
According to the book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rodgers, about 243 million tons of trash is produced each year in America (90). About a third of this trash can be recycled and reused. That is 81 million tons of reusable products that are going to landfills, and this massive waste of resources creates a number of problems not only environmentally but also economically. The two major environmental problems caused by landfills are atmosphere pollution and water pollution. Toxic emissions and substances often leech from landfills and enter the atmosphere and water. Over time, the waste products in a landfill break down, resulting in the releaseof toxic chemicals.Thesetoxins are released as gas into the atmosphere and are also washed into water sources by rain or leech into the earth's surface, contaminating important fresh water resources. Throwing away reusable products that end up in landfills is also economically irresponsible. With an increasing world population and an expanding world economy, the demand for natural resources is increasing greatly. Unfortunately, these natural resources are limited and can be expensive to extract, transport, and manufacture into products. However, many of the manufactured products such as aluminum cans and glass bottles made from these natural resources can be recycled and reused. Recycling and reusing eliminates the need to mine for natural resources in order to produce more everyday products like cans and bottles, which, in the long run, can save large sums of money as well as the environment. The problems caused by landfills may be very difficult to eliminate completely; however, the simple task of recycling reusable products can reduce these problems significantly.
Recycling is an effective way to conserve energy. To convert recycled materials into new products requires far less energy than beginning the production process again with new raw materials. “By recycling one ton of materials in a typical curbside recycling program, at least $187 worth of electricity, petroleum, natural gas and coal are conserved, even after accounting for the energy used to collect and transport the materials. In other words, the energy conserved through recycling is about five times as valuable as the average cost of disposing of trash in landfills” (Cozic 125). Glass, for example, accounts for about 10 percent of the solid municipal waste stream(Rodgers 177). Sand, soda, ash, and limestone are the main raw materials for making new glass. Not only is energy used to extract and transport these raw materials, but the process of making new glass also requires large amounts of energy to melt these materials down and manufacture them into glass. However, recycled glass that is crushed, known as cullet, melts at lower temperatures than the raw materials and therefore requires less energy to produce new glass bottles and containers. According to The Glass Packaging Institute, “recycled glass uses only two-thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from raw materials” (Green Living Tips).
Aluminum is another recyclable material that is used to make many products. Aluminum products make up for 1.3 percent of the solid municipal waste stream. Like glass, recycling aluminum saves large amounts of energy. It takes 95 percent less energy to produce an aluminum can from an existing one than from ore (Rodgers 58). According to The Aluminum Association, “aluminum can recycling in 1987 saved enough energy to supply New York City for over six months” (Strong 125).
Recently, recycling has grown tremendously in U.S. communities, with many recycling programs springing up all around the country. Government programs like the National Recycling Coalition created in recent years help to facilitate and encourage the practice of efficient recycling. The National Recycling Coalition and similar programs have proven to be quite effective, producing significant results and improvements. In the book Garbage and Waste, the author discusses these results and the improvements made so far:
Recycling has spread like wildfire. One survey reports 101 million Americans-- up to 24 million in a year--now receive curbside collection of their old newspapers, advertising mail, empty food and beverage containers, cardboard boxes and the like. At last count there was curb service in 6,678 cities and towns. That's a huge increase compared to about a thousand programs in 1990. During the same period, garbage dumps—landfill, as they are called by the pros—dropped from 8,000 to less than 4,400. (Cozic, 62)
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- Citation du texte
- Britt Pendergrast (Auteur), 2011, Benefits of Recycling, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/182995
