There are those who think that recycling requires too much effort. However, recycling makes perfect sense to people who understand the advantage of conserving our dwindling natural resources, one-third of which have been consumed by our society in the last three decades. Recycling programs are now sprouting up everywhere because they also seem logical to the economically minded and health conscious who care more about monetary and societal cost savings in the short term.
According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas recycled 35 percent of its waste in 2002, which translated to 15.8 million tons of trash that was diverted from landfills or incinerators. At this level of recycling, Texas municipalities supported over 2 million jobs in the recycling market based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates that indicate incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates one job and landfilling the same amount creates six jobs, while recycling that amount of waste creates 36 jobs.
On the other hand, recycling does a lot of good for human health and environmental health, because air and water pollution is significantly reduced through recycling. In fact, recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for three hours, which means less air and water pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants. The EPA shows that producing a can from recycled aluminum saves 95 percent of the energy required to make one from raw materials, since the mining, processing, manufacturing and disposal stages of this life cycle are eliminated.
To a lesser degree, the same goes for paper, plastic bottles and glass bottles, because the raw materials that they originate from are less energy intensive. Recycling even helps the university earn money, instead of literally throwing our tuition dollars away on dumpster pick-ups. So think about those tuition dollars next time you go to throw something away that could be recycled.
Joseph Grinnell is a senior economics and environmental science double major. He may be contacted at [email protected].
