Eric Quiroz
Mrs. Ence
English-2010
8 April 2014
Can it be wrong, when it feels so right?
We all care for our planet even if it is a very tiny part inside of us. The less effort we have to put forward in helping our environment the more we are actually willing to help and the better we feel about ourselves. In fact, more people recycle than vote in the United States; according to Samantha MacBride in her book Recycling Reconsidered. (MacBride 9) But, what if the good is outweighed by the bad? What if the immediate results are just delaying worst problems? The city of Saint George has a great waste management program, a county landfill which is in city limits, but the right distance from residential areas, and many respectable recycling centers. The city also offers recycling “binnies” at multiple locations throughout the city (WC). Waste management is near perfect in Saint George. However, the newly elected Mayor Jon Pike is looking to implement a city-wide curbside recycling program. “. . . [Mayor Pike] wants to pursue a longtime goal of bringing curbside recycling service to the area, embracing a nation-wide trend toward sustainability and hoping to extend the life of the county landfill.” reports David DeMille from The Spectrum. Yes, curbside recycling does indeed come with its benefits, but those benefits may not as be as beneficial as they appear. The City of Saint George should not implement curbside recycling.
When addressing this issue, it is necessary to discuss the cost of curbside recycling, which outweighs any economic gains. Second, it must be made known that the recycling process wastes more natural sources than it saves. For these three reasons --economic, environmental, and experiential—curbside recycling should ...
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...n the United States that covers its cost.”(Jacoby, Get Excited)
The environment conscious person can say, “But the cost does not matter, as long as the environment is benefiting from it.” Yes, it is entirely true the purpose of curbside recycling is to lessen the damaging effect we have on the environment. However, recycling essentially puts dangerous chemicals and toxins in to the environment. For example, paper recycling, according to the Clean Water Action Council of Wisconsin, that process creates hazardous by-products: “Approximately 250 tons of PCBs -well-known cancer-causing chemicals- were dumped into the Fox River … by paper recycling industries.” (Clean Water Council) Put into perspective: 250 tons is more than the complete amount of trash produced in the United States in one year, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. (EPA)
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Let 's take a look at the points from the article 10 ways recycling hurts the environment, by Andrew Handley. The number one point is that recycling gives false promises, but how? Andrew Handley says, “The biggest reason recycling hurts the environment doesn’t have anything to do with the technical process—it’s the mindset it gives people. Recycling’s main impact is to convince us that it’s okay to be wasteful in other areas, because we make up for it through recycling. It encourages consumption, rather than pointing out ways to reduce consumption overall.” Honestly, the biggest reason people don 't recycle is because they are plain lazy, there is no way to sugar-coat that. People don 't want to take the extra 10 seconds it would take to get another bag for the cans or bottles. They just don 't care.
Recycling is defined as the process of the collecting and the processing of materials (materials that on many occasions thrown away) ,and then shaving them into fresh commodities and turning them into new products. Recycling is important to the world today due to new technologies and new products constantly being devised. Without recycling Earth would plausibly end up as a planet of waste , a scenario depicted in the Disney Pixar movie ,Wall-E. So in all the questions being evaluated digress from “What occurs after they put that plastic bottle into the recycle bin?” to “To what extent is does recycling actually decrease the carbon footprint.” Hence is recycling salutary for the environment?
Imagine yourself in the middle of a rainforest, listen to the sounds around you, smell the fresh air, hear the wildlife; take that image and get rid of the trees around you, the sounds of wildlife, and the smell of fresh air. Instead of a rainforest you are now in the middle of a seemingly endless sea of trash and waste. The fresh scent in the air gone, the sprawling land of greenery and trees gone, and the sounds of the forest is reduced to the sound of heavy machinery trying vainly to reduce trash into smaller more compact waste.
According to Gale opposing view points, “the cost of collecting, sorting, and proceeding recyclables can, for some materials, be higher than that of creating new raw materials” (Gale). This goes to show that even sometimes, recycling an item such as steel or paper or whatever, can cost more than actually make a new material from scratch, aka raw material. Not only that, but the places where the give mentioned provides a recyclable bin, they cost money also. A different type of trash machine comes to pick it up, more money there. The driver gets paid. The employees at raw recycling factor, which probably don’t do much, also get paid. All these unnecessary funds going to waste while the are people starving in the nation. While there are people around the world who don’t even have safe, clean water to drink; yet the government goes and spends on recycling
We always hear "do not litter!" or "throw your litter in the bins", maybe some of you bored to hear that yet we still do not throw it in the correct place. Litter is a serious habit problem to just throw away objects on the ground or leave them lying on the ground, instead of putting them in the garbage can. In Indonesia, the amount of litter is 175.000 ton/day and this is increasing every day. But we don't have to see that far, just look around us, our campus, Sanata Dharma University is still facing the littering problems. Each day, although there are various spots of bins and it is never full yet there are many litters lying in the floor, you can see the student hall as the evidence that even though it has 10 spots of bins, we still find people throwing their litter everywhere.
I am not a big earth first person but I do believe in recycling because I work at a local recycling center and I think recycling is a good thing. In fact I think everyone should recycle to make the earth a better place as a whole. A few good reasons why recycling is a good this is, the more people recycle, the less room is filled in landfills. Also, when people recycle they are reusing materials, therefore saving resources. Another good reason is that when you recycle often times you get paid back the C.R.V. that you already paid for in the grocery store.
Lots of recycled products are less expensive than brand new ones. Buying cans, bottles, paper, and some clothing items made from recycled goods are all potential ways to save you money. People can use their recycled items. People can use their recycled paper to make pencil which saves money. When people make paper it cost $25,000 dollars a month. If people use recycled paper, then it won't even cost about $100. The benefit in cost per can in terms of savings is so low that it's quite insignificant. On another level, the savings in terms of energy required in making a new can from scratch as compared to making it from an existing can is tremendous. The cost of aluminum would be high if people did not recycle it. Metals like copper, iron, and steel can also be recycled. Scrap bits of metal can be brought to a scrap dealer who will pay cash for the metal. Automobile manufacturers get good money for scrap metal too. Some people think that recycling is a great way to save
When most people hear the word recycling they think of plastic water bottles, milk jugs, or even old paper that they can reuse, but this is not necessarily the case anymore. Scientists and researchers have discovered a new form of recycling that is going to help better the environment and it can even help make people money! Smokers around the world do not think about recycling their used cigarette butts, but this new form of recycling has changed some of their minds on this subject. Recycling has been a major environmental issue, but most people have forgotten about it or they just do not care for it anymore. Paper recycling dates back to as far as 400 B.C. Some people even say that the early Romans recycled their bronze coins so that they
For most of America, recycling has become a way of life. For some, it is a valiant effort to take charge of our waste and do what is right for the environment and for future generations. For others, it is a forced mentality by government agencies or private businesses who attempt to prove their value by self-promoting their commitment to environmental responsibility. Recycling, in theory, is a positive effort; however, massive recycling programs are not the answer. Recycling programs in general lack an intelligent way to a means, since the costs and environmental burden may outweigh the desired result. Recyclers should only focus on materials that they can process in a cost effective way, and consumers should focus
As an adult we already have bills to keep up with so why pay a fine for throwing away your garbage in the wrong container? Think about how much you would save if we didn't have to recycle every little thing. How annoying would it be to have a police show up at your door and write you a ticket because of a mistake you made with seperating our trash? I don't think anybody has time for that, especially if you have children, might as well find three more jobs to keep up with your TRASH bills! So, is taking extreme measures to save your landfill worth your time and money? I strongly
Some people say recycling is a waste of time. If one is a very busy person, then maybe. But taking that extra two seconds to recycle, saving energy, money, resources, and the world isn’t a bad plan either. If everyone would take the extra two seconds to recycle, the extra effort would help to make the world would be a much cleaner and more efficient place. Recycling could also help to lower taxes in the long run. Recycled materials have value, and trash costs money. A city recycling program could sell it and make money. Then, with the extra money, the city wouldn’t have to charge as much money on taxes. Now how does those two extra seconds sound now? One can better the place they live in and save some money by taking two extra seconds to recycle.
Recycling is important in the effort to preserve our environment for future generations. We are running out of locations to put landfills. Recycling is a simple and effective way to reduce the amount of waste stored in landfills, yet many people do not know how easy it can be. For example, whenever I go to Shoprite® and I b...
Preserving the environment is very important. One way that would be possible is by recycling. Recycling is the recovery and reprocessing of waste materials for use in new products. There are important environmental and economic benefits connected with recycling. Common materials that are recycled consist of aluminum cans, glass, paper, wood, and plastic (“Recycling”). Cleveland, Ohio joined the ranks of requiring recycling and also fines the homeowners for not disposing of waste correctly or leaving cans out too early or too long (McElroy 1). Michele McCay says that recycling is one of the easiest, most tangible ways of taking action for the planet (par. 1). If that is the case, why is it not required in all states? Recycling should be mandatory because it saves natural resources, it conserves energy, and it reduces pollution.
While walking through the park last Sunday, I observed a shocking scene. There are two cans: one for recycling and one for trash. The recycling receptacle had only an empty Dr. Pepper can and a few used Ozarka water bottles. On the other hand, the trash can had a plethora of half eaten meals, wrappers, banana peels and disgustingly even bottles, cans, newspapers and plastics that could have been recycled. Because people do not understand or do not care to understand about conserving our resources, many reusable items are being put in landfills when recycling these items could help save the environment.
Our planet is suffering from severe pollution, which ranges from contaminated air, water and soil as well. Humans are doing nothing to reduce the amount of pollution that is harming our earth. To understand how pollution works first you must understand that there are different types of pollution. The most common types of pollution and the ones that I will be focusing on which are the ones doing the most harm to our planet are air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and littering. In order to help out and reduce pollution in our planet people need to be more aware of what these problems are and about the severe damages that they are causing our planet. Before industrialization really jumped into place and had an effect on large cities, nature had its own way of cleaning up its own air and itself. Wind scattered gases, rain washed many substances and the rest dissolved into the ground; while plants absorbed carbon dioxide and made it into oxygen. With big cities growing more every time and with more towns that were becoming more industrialized a lot of more waste began to be released into the environment and the atmosphere and soon this was more than enough for nature to handle. In order to stop and reduce pollution people need to understand the damage that it is causing our environment and our planet as well. People need to be more aware of how they can help out and do their part in reducing these problems that are causing our planet to die slowly with people not even noticing it.