Top Ten Reasons to Recycle
And why you should buy recycled products if you don't already.
1) Recycling saves trees. This critical fact, one of the first
environmental lessons many children learn, cannot be overstated.
Half the Earth's forests are gone, and up to 95 percent of
the original forest area in the U.S. has been cut down.
2) Recycling protects wildlife habitat and biodiversity.
Using recycled materials reduces the need to chop down, extract,
process, refine and transport natural resources such as timber,
crude petroleum and mineral ores. As a result, destruction
of forests, wetlands, rivers and other places essential to
wildlife is also reduced.
3) Recycling lowers the use of toxic chemicals. Making products
from already refined waste materials reduces -- and often
avoids altogether -- the need for manufacturers to use toxic
chemicals, essential when using virgin materials.
4) Recycling helps curb global warming. Using recycled materials
cuts down on the energy used in the manufacturing process,
dramatically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other
air pollutants. For example, recycling one ton of glass results
in energy savings of more than 300% and lowers carbon dioxide
emissions by 3.46 tons.
5) Recycling stems the flow of water pollution. Making goods
from recycled materials generates far less water pollution
than manufacturing from virgin materials. Turning trees into
paper uses more water than any other industrial process in
the U.S., dumping billions of gallons of wastewater -- contaminated
with pollutants such as chlorinated dioxin -- each year into
rivers, lakes and streams. Paper recycling mills don't pollute
the water nearly as much, and almost always use less of it.
In addition, some recycling plants use treated wastewater
for the manufacturing process.
6) Recycling reduces the need for landfills. Toxic pollution
from landfills -- including cyanide, dioxins, mercury, methane,
hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and lead -- escapes into the
air and leaches into groundwater.
7) Recycling reduces the need for incinerators. Municipal
waste incinerators spew out all kinds of air pollutants; in
addition they produce contaminated ash. And they are often
located in urban neighborhoods where they seriously threaten
the health of the community. Keeping paper, glass, plastic
and metal out of incinerators by recycling them cuts both
how much incinerators pollute and how harmful the emissions
are.
8) Recycling creates jobs and promotes economic development.
A recent study by the Texas Natural Resources Conservation
Commission found that recycling added about $18.5 billion
in value to the economies of 12 Southern states and Puerto
Rico in 1995. A recycled newsprint mill in the Bronx, started
by NRDC and a local community group, will create 600 permanent
jobs and clean up an industrial site abandoned for a quarter
of a century.
9) Cities may profit by selling recyclables. While landfills
are always dumping grounds for municipal money as well as
garbage, cities with high recycling rates can actually make
money selling recyclables when markets are good.
10) Buying recycled products contributes to the demand for
more recycled products. This will, in turn, save even more
resources, reduce more pollution and protect more people's
health. On the other hand, as the size of the market grows,
recycled products will cost less.
