Recycling means that you take old materials, convert them into new, usable objects, and finally, you reuse or sell them for profit. Recycling is not just limited to manufacturing industries, but also extends to other industries like packaging and paper. You can also recycle your own things if you want to—these could include your clothes, furniture, appliances, and so on.
The recyclability of any material depends solely on the ability of the material to reclaim the qualities it possessed in its original or virgin state. The manufacturing industry produces many waste products that can then be turned into recyclable. Recycled plastic is used in toys, food containers, and other similar products, thus making it a valuable resource.
When you consider recycling, you should know that there is a big difference between using materials that have no recyclable properties and those that are recyclable. Recyclable materials are not only durable, but they also cause less pollution. They are also safer for the environment since most materials that are recyclable are made from repurposed materials. This is why most companies that deal with recycling prefer these materials when making products that are considered to be ‘eco-friendly.’
How Does Recycling Affect Our World?
1. Reduces Carbon Footprint
Recycling is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint. You can reduce the amount of chemicals and harmful materials in our atmosphere by recycling the plastic that you use in your everyday life. You can also make sure that you are using a recyclable product by taking the time to read the labels.
Many of the plastic products you use for things like plates and cups are made from polypropylene. If you take the time to check these items, you will find that there are some that are not made out of this type of plastic. Instead, they are made out of another type of plastic, which might not be recyclable.
2. Easy to Give Materials a Second Chance
What is so great about recycling is that it’s easy. You can simply throw any recyclable materials you might have in a bin, call a recycling company, and have it picked up and delivered to someone who is willing to take it off your hands for you and make better use of it.
Once they have received the materials, they will be able to start to create useful products out of them. One of the most popular forms of recycling these days is plastic bottles. These plastic bottles are great in making many different items, such as water bottles, cups, and many other products.
3. Reuses Raw Materials
The last reason to recycle is that you need to do it to help the planet. The recycling process uses up resources and allows them to be repurposed. As a result, we are not using as many raw materials to make new items because we have recyclable materials to work with. Instead of having to dig up precious natural resources and then shipping them away to be sold, we can simply take what we have and recycle it.
We do not need to worry about losing any valuable items because they can be recycled and used again for many different things. There is no shortage of things that can be recycled, so you can have many different types of materials that you can use.
A good example of this is paper. While it is not so efficient as a way to reuse, the newspaper can be used for packaging, as kindling, or to line a litter box. The more you reuse, the less waste will be produced. This also means that you will be producing less waste since you will be using certain materials multiple times before disposing of them.
Paper is one of the materials that we use the most. They are used for books, letters, packaging, and so on. Recycling will help you lower the costs of these materials and help conserve the earth since recycling paper helps reduce our carbon emissions.
How Does Recycling Help You Conserve Energy?
Recycling helps us reduce the amount of waste we put out into the environment, but more importantly, it helps reduce the amount of time that is needed to extract raw materials to make new products resulting in less air and water pollution.
Even recycling itself can help you save energy by not only reducing the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of but also by using up resources such as plastic bottles and paper that we would otherwise be throwing away. So as long as you take care of your recycled products in the right way, you can make sure that you do your part in making sure that the world is kept safe for future generations and that the earth stays healthy and eco-friendly for all of us.
Recycling, therefore, helps us cut back on both the amount of waste and the amount of energy that is being consumed by our energy-consuming appliances and other items. This means that we can help save the earth from becoming depleted and also help ourselves by reducing the amount of waste that is being produced.
And as recycling is not something new anymore, many companies are now offering services where you can do your own recycling by collecting your recyclables from your home or office and then sending them to recycling facilities or stores where they are sorted, packed, and then reused to make new products.
It is a great way to recycle, as there is no need for you to go out and purchase recycling bins since some of these companies provide the bins to you at no additional cost for using their services. Below is a list of how recycling different types of materials help save energy:
1. Organic Waste
One of the greatest ways of recycling is simply to repurpose your food waste. Many people aren’t aware of this but food waste makes up over 20% of all waste in landfills. This means that, if you find another way to use your food scraps, you could reduce landfill waste.
Reducing landfill waste helps save energy by reducing the amount of energy consumed by the large tractors used to work around landfills. In turn, this would also reduce the amount of trips garbage trucks would have to make since you will no longer be disposing of organic materials.
One way you can use your food scraps is by using them to make compost. Compost is one of the most popular ways to reduce food waste and reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Composting is famous among gardeners because it can be used to improve your soil.
Compost also is good for adding nutrients so your plants are healthier and happy. There are many different things that can be used to make compost. Some of the most popular things to use is fruit waste, food scraps, grass clippings, eggshells, tea bags, and even egg cartons. Making compost is easy if you follow the steps mentioned below:
- Pick a spot to make put a compost box and make sure your compost will be sitting on the bare ground.
- Add sticks to the bottom of your pile to help with airflow and to drain any excessive moisture.
- Add materials layer by layer alternating between wet ingredients like manure and dry ingredients like dry leaves.
- Add a source of nitrogen to kickstart the compost and speed up the process.
- Make sure you keep your compost moist. If you have rain regularly in your area, you can just let mother nature take care of this step. However, make sure you don’t overwater your compost!
- Cover your bin to help retain heat and moisture, and to prevent overwatering.
- Mix up your compost every couple of weeks to introduce oxygen to your compost, which is needed for the process of breaking down organic materials.
- Wait for the process to be completed. You will know your compost is ready when it looks like fresh dirt.
2. Glass
Many people aren’t aware of the fact that glass is made out of sand material. Sand mostly contains silicon dioxide which, when heated to extreme temperatures, becomes a liquid and can be shaped and molded into the desired product, which is then usable once the glass has cooled and solidified.
Glass making is one of the most energy-intensive industries, sand needs to be heated up to extreme temperatures by large energy-consuming furnaces. As such, many cities offer glass recycling services to help reduce the amount of energy consumed when producing glass bottles.
Making glass means having to heat up sand to extreme temperatures, but if you recycle glass it can be broken down to smaller particles, also known as cullet, that will then be reheated to create new glass. Making glass out of cullet compared to making it out of sand helps reduce energy consumption by around 40%
3. Aluminum
Aluminum is made by using mining equipment to extract an ore known as bauxite that is commonly found in the earth’s crust. Once the bauxite has been collected, it is then put through a chemical process that helps extract aluminum from this ore. Once extracted, the aluminum is then used to make different types of products and for other uses.
Making aluminum is an extremely energy-consuming process that starts when the ore is first mined. Lots of energy is used on machinery and the mining process. One of the most common ways to recycle aluminum is by collecting cans. This is one of the simplest ways you can recycle. Many people aren’t aware of the fact that about 180 billion soda cans are produced each year.
Saving your soda cans throughout the year and recycling them at the end of the year will help conserve enormous amounts of energy. To put it in perspective, recycling one soda can will save enough energy to run your personal computer for about three hours. Just imagine how much energy could be saved if you recycled all the cans you use!
4. Plastic
Most plastic goods and containers are made up of about seven different types of plastic. They are all made up of natural materials like cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt, and crude oil. Once the materials have been mined, they are then refined into propane or ethane. They are then put through a heating treatment known as cracking and the results are propylene and ethylene.
The two resulting materials can then be combined differently to make several polymers. One negative thing about plastics is that their quality degrades each time they are recycled. This means that you can only recycle your plastic items a certain number of times before they are no longer recyclable. Recycling plastic will help you save energy, landfill space, and petroleum. Recycling a ton of plastic can save about 5,774 KWH and close to 11 million BTUs of energy.
5. Paper
Most paper products that we use are made from trees. The trees are grown for this purpose, cut down and harvested, the trees are then processed to extract their fibers. Once they have been extracted, they are mixed with a liquid to make what is known as pulp. The pulp is then spread out on a surface, drained, and dried to produce giant sheets of paper.
The paper is then cut into smaller sheets and distributed to stores. This whole process uses an extensive amount of energy. Recycling paper uses about 40% less energy than making new paper from fresh pulp. Not only this but it also helps the environment because you use fewer trees for this process.
However, even though the paper is one of the most recycled materials, it still has a long way to go before the process is perfected. One of the biggest problems that is seen when recycling paper is that ink greatly damages the quality of the paper. To fix this issue, there is research going on into biodegradable ink.
Conclusion
Energy conservation is simply the act of trying to conserve energy by utilizing less of a conventional energy resource. This could be done either by utilizing energy better or by reducing the quantity of consumption used. Energy conservation is part of eco-sufficiency. The idea is that the world can no longer continue on its present course and needs to take a serious look at the way it uses energy and change to a more environmentally friendly mode of consumption. There are many ways that energy conservation can be accomplished but the most common are way is to simply recycle.
You have still missed the point, which is that you are supposed to be writing about energy conservation at home. None of this speaks to how recycling helps to save and conserve energy at home.
When revising this article, either take the stance that the individual reduction of waste at home affects the larger structure of energy usage in the production of new materials or brainstorm ways in which recycling can impact and reduce the usage of gas and electricity in the home because that is what energy usage in the home means.
I don’t think this is correct, because you still have to expend resources to convert old materials into new objects, it just means we may be creating less than we would with new material, or that we’re reducing pollution because the materials aren’t being put in a dump.
These are all points that are great and true about recycling, but they still do not actually address the subject at hand.
Not necessarily true. Again, recycling is a process and that process, especially for plastics, HAS to be done professionally because it’s a specific process that requires special equipment and expertise. As such, we as consumers have no real idea of how much fuel or energy it may take to recycle plastic.
Research the process more thoroughly if you want to be able to support your argument.
This, again, doesn’t really make any sense. Do you give your recycling to companies that just give it right back to you? Do you mean the recycling bins?
You absolutely have to either pay for a recycling service to come to you, which requires you to have a designated bin, or you have to carry your recycling to a center on your own.
