Civic Duty Essay

Recycling: A Civic Duty?

To recycle or not to recycle is the topic at hand. What is recycling and does it help to conserve our resources? The truth is that recycling and conservation are two different things. According to Dictionary.com, to recycle means to treat or process used or waste materials to make them suitable for reuse. Whereas, Dictionary.com states that to conserve means to prevent injury, decay, waste or the loss of. For this reason, this task has been sorted into three categories of “Reduce-Reuse-Recycle” because many conservationists believe that with these three parts, we will offset the depletion of resources. Environmentalist, Robert Swan said, “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” The thought of conservation is not a new concept or challenge which is

In 2009, it was estimated that Americans’ produced enough trash to circle the Earth 24 times (freejunkremovalquotes.com); and that was 5 years ago, with the rapid growth of population this will only escalate quicker. Eventually, we will run out of land to develop houses for this population because of how much land would be occupied by landfills. Once a landfill has reached maximum capacity (depends on size), ventilation pipes are installed and all contents are covered leaving this land undevelopable. According to Martin Sam, the author of “Recycling benefits the Environment” with the implementation of recycling has had a documented benefit stating that the number of landfills has decreased from 8,000 in 1988 to just over 3,000 in 1996; an incredible difference made considering the population growth. And, don’t forget to recycle those newspapers to avoid the 6 million tons of waste at