RECYCLE

Recycling conserves energy and will directly help save animals and nature. For example, recycling just 10 plastic bottles would save enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours

 

According to Friends of the Earth, here are some facts about recycling that may just blow your mind.

 

Why recycle?

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Conserves natural resources

The world's natural resources are finite, and some are in very short supply.

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At a basic level:

• Recycling paper and wood saves trees and forests. Yes, you can plant new trees, but you can't replace virgin rainforest or ancient woodlands once they're lost. 

• Recycling plastic means creating less new plastic, which is definitely a good thing, especially as it's usually made from fossil fuel hydrocarbons.

• Recycling metals means there's less need for risky, expensive and damaging mining and extraction of new metal ores.

• Recycling glass reduces the need to use new raw materials like sand – it sounds hard to believe, but supplies of some types of sand are starting to get low around the world.

 

Protects ecosystems and wildlife

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• Recycling reduces the need to grow, harvest or extract new raw materials from the Earth.

• That in turn lessens the harmful disruption and damage being done to the natural world: fewer forests cut down, rivers diverted, wild animals harmed or displaced, and less pollution of water, soil and air. 

• And of course if our plastic waste isn't safely put in the recycling, it can be blown or washed into rivers and seas and end up hundreds or thousands of miles away, polluting coastlines and waterways and becoming a problem for everyone. 

 

Reduces demand for raw materials

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The world's increasing demand for new stuff has led to more of the poorest and most vulnerable people (for example, those living around forests or river systems) being displaced from their homes, or otherwise exploited. Forest communities can find themselves evicted as a result of the search for cheap timber and rivers can be damned or polluted by manufacturing waste.

It's far better to recycle existing products than to damage someone else's community or land in the search for new raw materials.

 

Saves energy 

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Making products from recycled materials requires less energy than making them from new raw materials. Sometimes it's a huge difference in energy. For example:

• Producing new aluminium from old products (including recycled cans and foil) uses 95% less energy than making it from scratch. For steel it's about a 70% energy saving.

• Making paper from pulped recycled paper uses 40% less energy than making it from virgin wood fibres. 

• The amount of energy saved from recycling one glass bottle could power an old 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours and a new low-energy LED equivalent for a lot longer.

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