Pros And Cons Of Recycling

In today’s world, “the U.S. manages to produce a quarter of the world’s waste despite the fact that its population of 300 million is less than 5% of the world’s population, according to 2005 estimates (Malone).” In other words, countries like China and India, which represent 37 percent of the world’s population combined, produce less waste than the United States alone. Many people believe that just by throwing away trash in each correct bin will help the recycling process. Almost every city in Los Angeles County has a different trash bin for different usage i.e. greenery, plastic, and cardboard. These trash bins are extremely effective when it comes to recycling plastic, however what happens after the bin has been collected is more important.

We have to recondition our strategy on how we tackle plastic waste because we cannot afford to wait for landfills to malfunction in order to say that these issues are affecting our well being. We need to change our ethical stance by thinking long-term of what our actions are doing in order to stop practicing techniques that are only swell for a short period of time because they can result in major consequences. For example, if we keep the current status quo, we will eventually run out of space for plastic, both in recycling facilities and in landfills, thus, the landfill becomes saturated with toxin, and we will continue to release chemicals into the atmosphere causing harm to the biosphere. And, we certainly cannot always be creating new landfills every time we reach maximum storage, if so, we will run out of room on land and probably revert to the ocean for dumping trash. In fact, the ocean already has a trash estate larger than the state of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean i.e. gyres. So, instead of producing plastic, which can only be recycled a few times, harm the biosphere, and result in toxic-saturation, we can produce materials that are fully recyclable over and over again so that we do not need to waste anything any