Green Issues: What are the benefits of recycling?

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

What are the benefits of recycling?

Family recycling at a supermarket

Last week, after an event I was walking around gathering drink bottles to throw into the recycling bins. One of my colleagues asked me "what is the point of recycling?"

I went on to explain briefly that recycling:

Saves landfill as most things that are not recycled end up going into a hole in the ground somewhere, a landfill site
It helps to conserve our resources and so helps the earth, so that we do not have to manufacture new things, we can just re-use the ones we already have
Recycling helps to save energy and so helps to reduce global warming

Although it may seem amazing, but many people do not actually know much about Green Issues, although sometimes we assume that they do. Take for example people who do not want to live near a landfill site because of pollution and health risks, but do not recycle at all and do not care to do so.

Recycling does not always mean that you have to necessary remanufacture the product or item, it can also mean that you can find other uses for the item instead of burying it in a landfill site somewhere.

These other methods of recycling, not necessarily remanufacturing:

There is one website/blog I subscribe to where the woman recycles old materials and items into purses and bags. See the blog called The Purse Project.

Another company, Escama studio uses old drinks cans and makes them into bags and even clothes from what I have seen. See a video of the bags and clothing in the video below....