Recycling and Beyond

Reducing and reusing your waste can drastically cut down on the amount of items you throw in the trash. In addition, there’s a third way to scale down your waste and your carbon footprint: recycling.

A number of materials, like glass, aluminum, paper, and many kinds of plastic, can be recycled. Recycling stops us from throwing away materials that could be made into something new. When you send glass to be recycled, for example, it is melted down and used to create new glass.

Recycling reduces the amount of trash that we send to landfills and incinerators. Recycling also slashes the amount of raw material required to create new products. It even takes less energy to manufacture products out of recycled materials. Here are a few of the items that can take on new life through recycling.

Aluminum

Aluminum is one of the easiest and most profitable materials to recycle. Recycling aluminum is efficient, cost-effective, and widespread. According to The Verge, recycling aluminum saves around 90 percent of the energy required to produce new aluminum. When you recycle one aluminum can, you are saving enough energy to run a television for three hours, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Additionally, there is no limit to the number of times that aluminum can be recycled.

Paper

Paper recycling is less efficient than aluminum recycling, but it is just as important. When you recycle paper, you are reducing the paper industry’s need to cut down more trees. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) states that about 33 to 40 percent of industrial wood produced and traded worldwide is used to make paper and paper products such as catalogs. Recycling paper helps reduce the demand for virgin wood. This is particularly important from an emissions point of view, since trees transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. In addition, logging and timber transportation require the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels, adding more carbon to the atmosphere that these cut trees can no longer absorb. Recycling paper can make a difference in these emissions because one piece of paper can be recycled five to seven times. Seventeen trees can be saved by recycling one ton of paper, so if this paper is recycled seven times, it saves 117 trees.

Glass

Some glass bottles are returnable. When possible, it’s better to return bottles than to recycle them. Returned glass bottles are rinsed and reused for their original purpose, a less energy-intensive process than recycling. However, like aluminum, glass can be recycled an endless number of times. Glass bottles are melted down and then used to create new glass bottles. Recycled glass can also be used to create ceramics, bricks, and more.

Plastic

Plastic is one of the most important and most challenging materials to recycle. When you throw plastic bottles into the trash, they are taken to landfills. There, it will take seven hundred years before they even begin the extremely long process of decomposition. On the other hand, recycled plastic can be used to make lots of different types of products, from bottles to sleeping-bag filling to T-shirts.

There are seven different types of plastic. Not all of them are commonly recycled. Take a look at the plastic item you want to recycle to find out what type of plastic it is. Somewhere on the product, you should find a small triangle with a number in the center. This identifies the type of plastic you’re looking at. The most commonly recyclable plastics are plastics #1 and #2. Make sure you know what types of plastic your local recycling program accepts. If you try to recycle types of plastic your local recycler cannot handle, they will just be tossed in the trash anyway.

Other Items

Other materials that can be recycled include heavy electronics, ink cartridges, batteries, paint, motor oil, textiles, and even timber. Do some research and find out where and how to recycle these materials in your community. A resource to help you with your search is search.earth911.com. Usually, these items cannot just be thrown into the recycling bin.

How Do I Recycle?

The first step is to find out what recycling programs are available in your area and how they work. Many neighborhoods offer curbside recycling pickup. This means that you can set out recycling in a special bin next to your trash can. In some places, you can throw trash and recycling into one container—professionals will sort them out later on. In some areas with no curbside pickup, you may need to bring your recycling to a recycling center. If there are no recycling programs near you, you might be able to work with friends, with your school, or with a local business to start a recycling program.

Find out how your local recycling program works. Don’t recycle items your local program can’t handle. Use good recycling etiquette by removing labels and lids from your bottles and jars and rinsing them out before you recycle them. Just one dirty recycled can or bottle can cause a whole truckload of recycled items to become unrecyclable.

Buying Recycled Products

Another important aspect of recycling is buying products made from recycled materials. When you go shopping for printer paper, notebooks, bottles, and even clothes, check the labels of products. Look for items that were made from recycled materials (often referred to as “Recycled-Content Products” or “Postconsumer Content”).

Composting

Another way of reusing waste from your kitchen and your yard is composting. Compost is a mixture of decaying organic matter (plant and animal residues). Mature compost is produced when helpful bacteria break down your organic trash to make a type of rich fertilizer. Mature compost can keep your plants healthy and your garden sustainable. It also helps eliminate some of the greenhouse gases that your waste would otherwise release into the atmosphere while buried under other materials in a landfill.

Composting methods range from very simple “passive” or “cold” composting—which could be as basic as just making a pile of lawn trimmings and leaving it to rot—to more complex “hot” compost piles that require ingredients to foster the right ratio of carbon and nitrogen. The list of materials that can and cannot be composted is surprising. For instance, you can compost clean paper, cardboard rolls, sawdust, tea bags, wood chips, and lint from your dryer. However, certain materials might be dangerous to compost, such as black walnut bark and leaves, dairy products, fat, oil, meat, and fish bones. Before you and your family start composting, learn how to do so safely and effectively. There are multiple guides online through trusted organizations such as the National Resources Defense Council: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/composting-way-easier-you-think.

Mulching

One way of reusing garden trimmings is mulching. Mulch is a thin layer of organic matter spread out over the face of the ground. Over time, mulch decays and helps to enrich the soil while protecting plants. Common mulches are wood chips, grass, and sawdust. Sprinkling grass clippings over the face of your lawn is one easy way to mulch. You can reduce your carbon footprint by using compost and mulch as fertilizer in your garden, as opposed to artificial, petroleum-based fertilizers.

Be the Change You Want to See

You can urge your school to do its part by reducing the amount of paper it uses, conserving energy, and increasing its energy efficiency. Make sure your school recycles paper, bottles, and cans. Encourage your school to buy sustainable paper products made from recycled material. Write a letter or an email to your state representatives. Ask them to support strong measures to develop alternative renewable energy and to reduce emissions both state- and nationwide.

Above all, stay informed, involved, and active. Always ask yourself what effect your actions are having on the environment. The problem of climate change is enormous, but every solution has to start somewhere. Your actions could inspire other people to change their own lives.

Start small. By changing your life one habit, one product at a time, you can make a difference. If everyone pitches in to reduce his or her own carbon footprint, we can help make the world a better, cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable place. By reducing, reusing, and recycling, we can even save lives—our own, our planet’s, those of all living things, and those of future generations on Earth.