Simple, Green living pt. 2

Let’s talk about recycling!

Back when we lived in Oregon, it was super easy to recycle.  We had curbside pick-up and you could mix all recyclables (except glass) together.  Easy.  Now that we’re in a smaller town in Colorado though, it’s not so easy.  There are a couple of drop off locations in town, but they are limited in what you can recycle and you have to separate all items yourself.  It takes more effort to recycle.  But it’s worth it.  And it is important to me to pass this on to my children.

“The environmental and economic premise of recycling is sound: re-using natural resources over and over again after they have been extracted from the earth makes good sense. By conserving the dwindling supply of these resources and protecting the few remaining undamaged ecosystems left on the earth, we are preserving them for future generations. Overall, the processes used to make consumer goods from recycled material instead of raw resources is much more energy and water efficient. For example, recycled paper uses 60-70% less energy than virgin pulp and 55% less water. Also, making recycled products reduces greenhouse gas emissions and the need to build landfills.

Consumer products do not benignly arrive on store shelves with no impacts attached. In fact, making goods from natural resources can cause great harm. The destructive nature of mining, logging and drilling in fragile natural habitats to produce goods that will only be used once and then thrown away is extremely wasteful. For instance, for every garbage can placed at the curb, there are 71 cans of waste created in the extractive and industrial processes used to convert raw materials into finished products and packaging. Simply put, making paper from paper, cans from cans and plastic from plastic is infinitely kinder to the earth than clearcutting a forest in the Pacific Northwest, mining for bauxite ore in South America or drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Recycling not only saves precious resources but also avoids the toxic processes used to turn these resources into consumer products. For example, producing paper from trees requires chlorine to remove lignin from wood. This process produces dioxins, a known carcinogen. On the other hand, recycled paper already has the lignin removed and only requires using hydrogen peroxide to remove ink.

Keeping waste out of landfills also makes economic and environmental sense. One in five Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup sites is a landfill. Contaminated with tons of toxic material, these landfills have cost taxpayers millions of dollars to clean up and monitor, a process that is likely to continue for many decades into the future. For industry experts, the question isn’t if a landfill will leak toxins, but when. Therefore, recycling to avoid landfill disposal helps avoid environmental and public health threats down the road.”

Taken from www.ecocycle.org.

There are plenty of other ways that you can recycle as well.  You can shop for clothing at thrift stores or garage sales instead of buying new.  Same with household items and furniture.   You can find creative ways to make things out of what you already have.   How do you recycle?

Use it all – Wear it out – Make do – or Go without.