Recycling for A Better Country

The United States is the leading Nation in producing trash. An American generates about 4.51 pounds of trash.

Studies show that 20-70% of recycle is discarded because it is contaminated.

Impacts of not recycling

-Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Plastic items take up to 450 years for it to break down in a landfill.

-Recycling glass results in 50 per cent less water pollution compared to making a new glass bottle from raw material.
-If 1/10^th of newspapers were recycled in America, 25,000,000 trees would be saved each year.
-Landfills are among the biggest contributors to soil pollution – roughly 80% of the items buried in landfills could be recycled

Benefits of recycling

-A cleaner environment and less landfills

-Recycling saves twice as much energy than burning it

-Reduces emissions
-Recycled paper reduces air pollution by 75%

Fixing the Nation’s Problem- 9 out of 10 people said they would recycle if it were “easier”

For many years, The United States relied on China with their recycle until China decided to put an end to it. The country’s system is broken to improve it, the following ideas can be implemented to decrease the problem:

- Mandatory for households to separate foods and plastics by using three separate bins -recycle, compost, landfill

- Increase the availability of separate bins in public spaces

- Add labels to plastic items with facts

- Charge companies a fee to produce plastics

Single stream recycling is easier, but one quarter of material is contaminated. Just a little bit more of energy is needed to sort and clean trash for a better environment in this country.

References: https://www.rubicon.com/blog/statistics-trash-recycling/

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-recycling-broken.html