By the time you’re ten, you have most likely heard the phrase: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. But how effective is recycling?

When younger, you’re more likely to actually recycle because you have been taught that is the right thing to do. However, that quickly changes once children grow up because their apartment or house charges extra for recycling, or because recycling is too much of a hassle.

According to the Clean Air Council, “Only 30% of people in the Southern region of the United States had curbside recycling collection [recycling that is deposited by the residents outside of each house and picked up by recycling representatives] in 2008. Eighty-four percent of people in the Northeast had curbside recycling.” Especially since the percentage within the Southern region is so low, it certainly does not encourage people to recycle. “In 2008, only 23.1% of glass disposed of was recycled, and only 7.1% of plastics and 21.1% of aluminum.” Surprisingly, “the average American office worker uses about 500 disposable cups every year” and “every year, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times.”

The startling fact is that a lot of Americans do not recycle, “Over 7 billion pounds of PVC are thrown away in the U.S. each year. Only 18 million pounds of that, about one quarter of 1 percent, is recycled.”

Recycling is a huge deal on my college campus because we are trying to “Go Green” and leave less of a carbon footprint. Sure, there are still people who do not recycle and those who use a different plastic water bottle every day, but the majority of those on campus will at least recycle.

However, many times even “recycled” plastics cannot be reused, so why are so many of our items made from plastic? If you look around the room, you would be surprised at how many plastic items you own, ranging from food containers to shelves. Looking at the statistics for water bottles alone is sickening. The Clean Air Council claims that “827,000 to 1.3 million tons of plastic PET water bottles were produced in the U.S. in 2006, requiring the energy equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil. 76.5 percent of these bottles ended up in landfills.” In addition, “26 to 41 percent of the 2.4 million tons of PET plastic discarded every year is bottled water bottles” and “because plastic water bottles are shielded from sunlight in landfills, they will not decompose for thousands of years.”

It may not be feasible to believe that plastics can be eliminated entirely from our lives, but everyone can be more conscious about their plastic usage. You can reduce your own plastic consumption in several easy ways, such as bringing your own bags to the grocery store so you do not get more paper or plastic bags. “Every year, Americans use approximately 1 billion shopping bags, creating 300,000 tons of landfill waste.” In fact, “Less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled each year.” You can also buy a reusable water bottle rather than buying bottled water.

If everyone made an effort to use fewer plastics, everyone would be doing something better than recycling: they would be proactive about an issue, rather than simply throwing something away in the proper bin.

The article Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Plastic bags originally became popular in the 1980’s, when businesses made the switch away from paper bags to cut back on costs. But the widespread use of plastic bags is leading to irreversible damage to the environment, and it is past time to start cutting back on use.

According to reuseit.com, over one trillion plastic bags are used every year worldwide. Each of these plastic bags, due to their content of high-density polyethylene, can take up to one thousand years to degrade when thrown in a landfill. Furthermore, plastic bags are the second most common type of ocean refuse after cigarette butts. The regular consumption and disposal of plastic bags is filling the earth with waste that will not decompose.

Some companies have taken steps toward correcting the growing problem. For example, the Envion Oil Generator, from the Envion company located in Washington D.C., turns recyclable plastic into synthetic oil, which then can be turned into fuel. Each generator processes 10,000 tons of fuel annually, and each ton creates around 4 barrels of crude oil. Their synthetic oil can be generated for a mere $10 per barrel, while the current market price is $70 per barrel. They plan to dramatically reduce the amount of plastic bags that build up as trash worldwide by “actively manufacturing, marketing, and licensing its proven technology in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia,” according to the company website. 

Michael Han, chairman and chief executive of Envion, said “We’re creating immediate answers to today’s environmental concerns. This is an answer to environmentalists who don’t want a landfill in their back yard.”

Blest Corporation, a Japanese company, made a similar machine. Their machine also outputs crude oil, which they plan to use for industrial businesses. They offer some of these generators for sale on their website.

However, these companies require that people actively recycle plastic bags. According to Clean Air Council’s Waste and Recycling Facts, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled. In addition, the cite claims that with old technology, recycling one ton of plastic bags costs $4000, while the average box of plastic bags can only be sold for $32 on the commodities market. Recycling is therefore not considered the best way to deal with the high-intensity use of plastic bags. The 99% that is not recycled still pollutes the environment.

One country has recognized politically that something needs to be done. In 2001, Ireland implemented a plastic tax, or plastax, to cut back on use. In stores, customers were charged a nominal amount per bag at checkout. Usage dropped 93.5% overall, a drop from about 328 bags to 21 bags per person each year. Reusable shopping bags, which took the place of disposable ones, have saved around 18 million liters of oil. This was an extremely successful way to counteract the effects of plastic bags in Ireland: a large-scale incentive not to use them.

Following Ireland’s example, many other countries and cities have developed a similar tax in the hope of cutting back on waste.

Plenty of states have developed recycling initiatives, such as New York, Virginia, and Iowa, but nothing has been as successful as Ireland’s tax. School districts have also imposed environmental education, installing recycling bins in classrooms and teaching elementary school students to ‘Go Green’ with reusable bags. The world has a long way to go before plastic bags are finished with, and the next couple of generations will still be cleaning up the mess.

The article Plastic Bag Solutions: More than Recycling appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.