Recyclingby Dharmendra Kapri | 07-08-2016 08:33 |
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This is when certain items of rubbish are crushed or melted down and turned into something else to be used again. Half our rubbish is recyclable. Recycling uses less energy than making something new from scratch and it uses less of the Earth?s natural resources.
Lots of materials can be recycled: Glass e.g. bottles and jars, Paper and cardboard, Aluminium e.g. drinks cans, Plastic e.g. bags and bottles and many more.
Rubbish for recycling is either collected from your house or we have to take it to special bins at a recycling centre, where we separate the rubbish into the different types. Large lorries then come and collect it for recycling. Recycling Glass Glass is made from sand, sodium carbonate and limestone, which all come from the earth. If we recycled more glass, less of these precious resources would have to be dug up.
Glass bottles and jars are often melted down and made into new bottles. But sometimes the glass isn?t suitable to be made into another bottle so it is crushed down and used as ?glassphalt? for road surfaces or the reflective surfaces of road signs.
Recycling glass uses 25% less energy and produces 20% less carbon dioxide (another greenhouse gas) than making a new bottle from scratch. Glass can be recycled over and over again.
Recycling one bottle saves enough energy to run a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours. Recycling Plastic Plastic is made from oil (which is drilled from under ground or under the sea) and it can be recycled too. There are many different types of plastic, such as bottles, bags, cling film, cellophane etc. Lots of plastic rubbish ends up in landfill or being dumped in or near the sea so the world?s beaches and oceans are littered with floating rubbish that takes hundreds of years to decompose.
Plastic jacket anyone? When plastic is recycled, it can be made into all sorts of new things, from ?fleece? jackets (one jacket can be made from 25 plastic bottles!) to picnic benches and car park bollards. Plastic bags are one of the biggest problems in terms of waste. Each year billions plastic bags are produced in supermarkets in the world, most of which are only ever used once again (if at all) before being thrown away. But these, too can now be recycled.
Recycling MetalDrinks cans, food tins (beans, soup etc) and foil packaging are made of metal. So are cars, fridges, cookers, bikes?.. Most metals can be recycled.
Aluminium is one of the most common metals on earth. It is made from melted bauxite which is mined from underground. Bauxite is only found in areas of Tropical Forests and mining it is difficult, requiring a lot of energy. It produces a lot of waste, causes pollution and often destroys rainforests. Bauxite may also run out one day.
Aluminium is one of the easiest and best metals to recycle (it can be recycled over and over again): it saves 95% of energy and causes 95% less air pollution when it is recycled compared to when it is made from fresh resources. If all the aluminium cans in the USA that ended up in landfill were stacked end to end they would reach the moon in just 5 weeks! Brazil recycles 87% of their aluminium. The USA recycles only 50% of theirs enough is thrown away every three months to rebuild their entire commercial airline fleet! 20 aluminium cans can be made out of recycled materials with the same amount of energy it takes to make one new can. Lots of bigger bits of waste metal can be sent away as scrap (i.e. used again). The scrap metal business is an industry in itself. Recycling Paper Does paper grow on trees? Well yes, sort of! Paper is made from pulp, which is mushed up wood, which comes from trees. 40% of all trees cut down are felled to make paper. A natural forest half the size of the UK is lost every year in order to make paper, and not enough trees are being planted to replace them – it is unsustainable.
The production of paper uses a lot of chemicals, energy and water. Paper is recycled by shredding it and soaking it to a pulp before drying it out to make more paper. It is easy and recycling uses 60% less water, 40% less energy and cuts air pollution by 74%. Recycling is all very well and important to do, but wouldn?t it be even better not to throw things away in the first place?
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