Negatives Of Recycling

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I think that requiring people to recycle would make a huge positive impact on the environment and people’s lives. I believe recycling isn’t something people should just consider doing, I believe it is there duty to do it. There are many benefits to recycling including, the reduction in landfill sizes, less pollution occurring from the rotting products in the landfills, less energy consumption, and money saved. The refusal to recycle is not only hurting us as people, it’s hurting the earth, the place we call home.
One of the benefits of requiring people to recycle, is the reduction in the sizes, and numbers of landfills. “Recycling and composting diverted nearly 70 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2000, up from …show more content…

Take office paper, for example. Recycling 1 ton of it is 43 percent less energy intensive than starting from scratch, as is recovering steel, plastic and aluminum, at a 60 percent, 75 percent, and 96 percent reduction in energy consumption levels, respectively, per material”- Leigh, Elizah. "Effects of Recycling on Humans." SFGate. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2015., with an energy crisis and revolution on our hands, this should be one of the first steps we take to reduce our energy consumption and become a more energy efficient nation. The proven numbers of the energy we save by recycling materials is staggering. Not only do we become more efficient, but we use less natural resources, allowing our environment to flourish. “Every ton of paper that is recycled saves 17 trees”- :." A Recycling Revolution. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2015. By allowing our environment to flourish we help ourselves prosper. Who wouldn’t want to make the place they live even more beautiful than it already is. Recycling goods will allow us to go from having a natural resource shortage, to having an abundance of these materials. It goes without saying also, that the less energy required to make a product, and the fewer materials that have to be gathered, the less money is spent on producing a final product. This means we …show more content…

One of the critic’s main arguing points is what they refer to as “downcycling”. They state, “The goods being collected for recycling are not always of the same quality and may not be sorted properly. For example, high-quality office paper may be mixed with the poor-quality fibers found in newsprint, or different glass containers may break and result in a mixed glass mixture. This may result in downcycling, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, leading to potential poor quality end results, unmarketability and a loss of public confidence in recycling”- Duvauchelle, Joshua. "Cons of Recycling." Livestrong. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2015. They also say that while recycling uses less energy and produces less pollution, that it still does produce pollution. I feel as if that is a moot point, while it does in fact produce some pollution and use some energy, facts have shown that it uses far less energy and produces far less pollution than not

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