Recycling

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Why is it important to travel efficiently?

Recycling is one of the easiest ways to help the environment as it saves non-renewable resources. Using recyclables to make products helps in saving energy. For example, recycled steel saves 60% production energy, recycled newspaper 40%, recycled plastics 70%, and recycled glass 40%.

Natural resources are being depleted as landfills are being filled. Our current system of production, consumption and disposal has become unsustainable. Recycling is important as waste has a huge negative impact on the natural environment. Harmful chemicals and greenhouse gasses are released from rubbish in landfill sites. Recycling helps to reduce the pollution caused by waste. The following cites ways and reasons to recycle.

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Ways and cases to recycle:

Make recycling bins readily available. ​

You should make sure your home and office are outfitted with recycling bins for paper, plastic and metal. Keep them out in the open and label them appropriately. Sometimes the convenience factor is all that is needed.

Buy recycled paper and print on both sides. ​

When using paper in the office, print on both sides of the sheet and recycle the paper when finished. By recycling one ton of paper, you can save 17 trees, almost 7,000 gallons of water and more than three cubic yards of landfill space.

Use reusable bags instead of plastic.

A weekly trip to the grocery store requires an average of 10 plastic bags to carry the entire load of groceries home. That is approximately 520 plastic bags per year for a single household. Rather than recycling the plastic bags, use reusable cloth bags that you can wash and reuse throughout the year.

Recycle Technology.

• Recycle your outdated technology. According to the EPA, Americans throw out two million tons of e-waste each year. By recycling your old technology, we avoid adding to that waste.
  
• Buy rechargeable batteries. It takes 1,000 regular batteries to equal the lifespan of one rechargeable battery. When you are discarding your batteries, recycle them.​
  
• Recycle your empty ink and toner cartridges. Almost eight cartridges are thrown out in the United States every second of every day. That's almost 700,000 cartridges per day.

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It is imperative for everyone - from individuals to large organizations - to rethink our ideas and relations to trash disposal. By reducing the amount of trash produced and reusing existing materials, we can all make a difference by protecting the environment, conserving natural resources, and sustaining the planet for future generations.