The One Green Intention You Can Make Today
What you need to read before you throw out that trash
Recycling is probably one of the easiest daily environmental actions you can personally take but it can also be one of the most confusing ones. I often find myself standing in front of a set of blue and green color coded bins, staring at them as I try to decide which is the best one for the trash that’s in my hand. Part of the problem is that while there is a universal symbol for recycling, there are no universal color codes on trash bins for what is waste and what is recyclable. Just to make it more confusing is the fact that the rules for what can be recycled vary state to state and even between towns and cities.
San Francisco which recycles 80% of it’s waste is making the push for what is called three stream recycling: black is for waste, green is for organic trash and blue for combined recycling. In New York City, recyclables must be separated by mixed paper or cardboard and metal, glass, plastic or cartons and then placed in recycling bins or clear plastic bags for pick-up. Houston is advocating One Bin For All, what they call the next evolution of recycling. OBFA allows all trash, compostables and recyclables to be placed in one bin and then uses technology and new process systems to do the sorting. Their initiative is not without controversy but it sure does sound like a way to make it easier for more people to participate and to achieve a universal goal of zero waste.
Recycling is not a new idea.
While it may seem that the idea of recycling is a product of the 1960s and 70s and the environmentalist movement, “creative reuse” of materials is not a new concept and in fact it has patriotic roots. When metal was scarce in Colonial America, Paul Revere kept a scrap-metal yard. During WWII the US government encouraged recycling of old metals and paper and even tin foil to “help put the lid on Hitler.” But it was after WWII that a booming economy and a philosophy that you throw stuff out instead of repurposing it created a glut of disposable cans and bottles. The result is 230 million tons of accumulated waste each year that is doing grave damage to our environment.
Recycling saves resources
Did you know seventeen trees are saved from every ton of paper recycled and four tons of bauxite ore are saved from one ton of recycled aluminum cans? Americans throw away 35 billion plastic bottles every year! The best thing to do is to avoid plastic completely, especially those plastic water bottles as I do. The second best thing is to remember that recycling one ton of plastic saves 16.3 barrels of oil!
Recycling saves energy
The production of new products from raw materials requires more energy than producing it from recycled materials. For example recycled aluminum saves 95% of the energy required to make it from virgin bauxite. Recycling just 10 aluminum cans saves enough energy to power 1.7 hours of an air-conditioner and recycling 10 plastic bags saves enough to power 3.4 hours on a laptop!
Recycling creates jobs
Recycling creates nine times more jobs than burying our waste in landfills and incinerators. It’s estimated that 1.1 million new jobs can be created in the US by 2030 with a recycling rate of 30%. Jobs are created in the collection and processing of the waste and in making new products from recycled material like these w.r.yuma 3d printed sunglasses made from recycled car dashboards and soda bottles.
Waste not, want not
No matter how it’s being addressed the one thing we can all agree on is that we create too much waste. In fact it’s estimated that 4.6 pounds of trash per person is created each day and only half of that is recycled! That number might sound like too much to tackle but all it takes to live with a green heart is for each of us to think about which bin that newspaper should go in when we’re finished reading or which one gets our empty glass bottle. As that old proverb teaches us, by recycling instead of wasting we get to receive a lot more — a cleaner, greener and healthier planet.
