How the Environment Benefits from Recycling

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Recommended: recycling and its effect on the environment

Care for a snack? Try the chocolate bar that comes in recyclable packaging, or maybe pick up a package of sustainable wood-fiber-filled baby diapers, or a no-animal-testing sunscreen, nontoxic spray cleaner, an entry form for a Prius giveaway or a cloth grocery bag for your shopping (Layton, 2014). Many products have become useful in so many ways that not recycling is harmful as well as unwise and uneconomical. There’s not enough room to throw trash all over the place, pollute, and simply not recycle. In order to understand the importance of recycling, people must first understand what recycling is, what it involves, and how it works. It is also important to know not only the effects of recycling but benefits as well. There are benefits to recycling paper, plastic, glass and aluminum; such as saving energy, saving money, reducing air pollution, and even creating jobs – which not only benefit the environment but the economy as well.

Recycling is not a new concept; it has been around for years. Even in the times of war and the hard times, when famine, and widespread illness occurred, that’s when recycling of waste were made necessary because new materials were scarce. Recycling metals, jewelry, and coins were melted for weapons and other necessary goods (History of Recycling, 2014). By the late 1960s, the air, rivers and forests of North America were in serious disrepair as a result of massive industrial development. Rivers were catching fire, the sludge and debris dumped by factories igniting with the slightest spark. In a midsize city like Portland, Oregon, people were breathing air that polluted their lungs at the same level as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day (Layton, 2014). Forests were being leveled at an ala...

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Watson, S. (2014). HowStuffWorks "How did Earth Day start?". HowStuffWorks "People".

Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-

traditions/holidays/earth-day-qotd.htm

West, L. (2014). Glass recycling - Benefits of glass recycling - Why recycle glass?

Environmental Issues - News and Information about the Environment. Retrieved December 11, 2014, from http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/benefits_

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