Does recycling make a difference

People are destructing the world through pollution and squandering of natural resources. I chose recycling because people use it as a solution to save the world from pollution. Recycling is the process of making use of waste products into new products to prevent accumulation wastes. I become curious about recycling because people mostly are expected to recycle, however I wonder whether it make really a difference in environment. Recycling has become more controversial issue especially when it comes to contextualize the actual effect of dropping bottle and cans into the green bin. Recycling imparts a huge difference and in every urban city, recycling bins are found in public buildings. Recycling is regarded as the convenient thing to perform within the environment.

I came to know the topic because currently people are living in materialistic globe. I knew that recycling is important but in certain cases it may not be convenient approach to reduce wastes. Various end-products need different quantity of processing and energy to recycle a product. Some materials like aluminum have specific advantages when recycled. The energy used in recycling aluminum is approximate 95 percent less than making it from raw materials. Nevertheless, for products such as glass, plastic, and paper, it is not advantageous to recycle the product. The reason behind this claim is that cost and energy to transport and collect the recyclable is much greater than energy and cost of manufacturing the product from raw materials. This is partially because of the environmental cost are nowadays externalized and the harvesting cost of a virgin material is below the actual cost. Nevertheless, people have to work within the political and societal framework which they live in. It implies that in some cases it is not cost effective to transport heavy bottles and glasses to be recycled when people are capable to manufacture it from raw materials for cheaper cost.

I knew that location is factor that has to put into a consideration. Collection of   garbage in cities of high density of people would be economical when trucks transport the recyclables to the recycling location. Huge trucks can use less energy and more efficient for transporting recycled materials. Knowing the land availability for landfills and what distance it is from recyclers is important. Rural regions have access for cheaper lands; therefore discarding their recyclable products can be cheaper. Location is a factor that influences the economic effectiveness of recycling and recycling equation.

I understand that when people think about becoming environmentally friendly, they consider recycling as a factor of being green. Nevertheless, I realized that recycling is an incorrect approach since there are several other things which are more effective then recycling. For example, most western countries make use of higher density PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) bottles that are refillable up to 20 times. The bottles have to collected and sanitized before they get reused; they don’t need to be reformed, heated, and crushed for use. Reducing wastes is the effective way for creating “green” while reusing is more significant than recycling. However, it is entirely impossible to reduce human effects into nothing. People can only eliminate their environmental effects by rethinking the manner they make things. Whenever products are recycled, the quality of a material reduces to appoint where it must eventually be thrown away. For instance, when pulp products are recycled, the pulp fiber become smaller every time they are recycled until they are not usable thereby they are sent to landfill or are burnt.

Recycling materials is considered as the best way of treating the cause of this problem, but the real cause is not addressed. I realized that what can really make a difference is that human products should be made in such as way that waste streams need to be nutrients that are used in another system. This is the only way to make the society become sustainable. Although, recycling is regarded as a solution, it only gives a temporary remedy.