RECYCLING
Recycling is so important, yet in today's society, I don't see many people recycling.
According to the EPA we recycled/composted a little over 30% of recyclable material in 2013.
So what about the other 70%?
Can you guess? Materials that could serve a second life are sitting in landfills right now.
Much of our waste even ends up in the ocean.
Now when I was young, there was an moment in which I would forever feel compassion for how sea life would suffer do to our careless actions.
Now what could have happend to make me feel so deeply about the lives of sea life?
HAPPY FEET
HAPPY FEET HAPPENED.
This seemingly average kids movie has such an underlying importance.
There is a heart breaking scene where a penguin gets plastic wrapped around it's neck and nearly dies.
Perhaps one of the most important movie moments as a kid in such an average movie.
What an impact it makes.
I remember learning about recycling as a kid and going around chanting "REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE"
Recycling was such a fascinating and important thing to me as a kid that I let get away from me in adulthood.
*Photo was taken from google images: Scene from Happy Feet
Throwing the recyclable plastic in the garbage is such an easy, careless thing to do. And boy, am I guilty of it.
I have a provided recycling bin in my college dorm room and the whole first semester, my roommate and I used it as a second trashcan. We decided that this semester was the time to finally start recycling. AND WE HAVE RECYCLED SO MUCH.
More than half the stuff I typically throw away is recyclable.
I go through a case of water bottles every two weeks or so because of how hard the water is here, which is way different than my water at home. I was throwing all those bottles away, when I could have been recycling them.
straws
The problem with straws is that they don't decompose well. They break off into pieces and sea life often mistake the pieces as food and as a result, end up with a bunch of plastic in their poor little tummies :(
Now this is another hard thing for me, not using straws as much.
Because I literally love getting fountain drinks and need a straw.
But what if we opted out of using straws when we have a glass we can drink from. If we aren't on the go, why even grab a straw, why not just take off the lid and drink it like you would a normal glass of milk at home? Why even grab a lid at all?
Little things can make a big difference.
Think about how many straws you have used in your lifetime? Think about how much waste you are producing a day.
It seems to me that I fill both bins in my dorm room every day or two. That's a lot of waste.
It is possibly to live without producing so much waste. It just takes effort.
Ugh. Effort.
Doesn't effort suck?
It means you gotta take time out of our precious self-centered lives, and put effort into something that can have an impact on our sea life, ecosystems, the future generations, and the future earth.
Do you recycle? I'm guessing most people who read this article don't.
Why People Are Not Recycling
Well,
- Takes time and effort
- Don't know how to start recycling
- Not sure what is recyclable
The main reason why I wasn't recycling, was because I wasn't sure what was recyclable.
A lot of plastic products have a recycling symbol on them with a number in the center. The number just indicates what type of plastic it is. The lower numbers tend to be easier to recycle than higher numbers. I often see the recycle symbol with a 6 on many household items, such as plastic, reusable cups.
They installed recycling bins next to all the trashcans in my high school lunch room and one of the lunch ladies told me they hadn't started recycling yet because people are not aware of what is recyclable.
The school needed to teach the students what was recyclable.
So the recycling bins were just a second trashcan.
I encourage you, to start recycling.
And if you are ever unsure about what is recyclable, google it.
Print off a list and tape it to your recycling bin. And if you don;t have a bun dedicated to recyclables, get one.
I use an old shoe box for paper recycling, and the blue bin, for blue indicated recyclable items.
Paper, plastic, cardboard, glass, and cans are all recyclable.
An image from google down below goes into more descriptive detail of what you can recycle.
I urge you, make the decision to take better care of our earth and its inhabitants.
I urge you to be less wasteful.
It's never too early to start recycling.
Take care of the earth,
Truthtalks