Recycling avoids the emission of many greenhouse gases and water pollutants, and saves energy. The use of recovered material generates less solid waste.
Recycling
helps reduce pollution caused by the extraction and processing of virgin materials. There are four basic approaches to responsible waste management.The three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle) are three approaches and the most preferred from an environmental point of view. Reducing, reusing and recycling waste helps save space in landfills by preventing the entry of useful materials. The amount of energy and natural resources needed to produce or harvest the raw materials and manufacture the product is reduced. Greenhouse gas emissions caused by shipping the product anywhere it is sold are reduced.
The San Diego County Office of Education found that recycling a glass bottle saves enough energy to turn on a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. Metal recycling could also reduce the need to extract and extract new metallic minerals in a risky, expensive and harmful way. Plastic is the main source of waste in the oceans and recycling will mean less plastic in these bodies of water and, therefore, fewer effects on marine life. Stanford recycled, composted and from another source reduced 62% of its waste and reduced landfills by 35%.
According to research from the University of Central Oklahoma, paper recycling reduces air pollution by 73% and water pollution by 35%. The reductions in GHG emissions resulting from the reduction in the source of a variety of common materials are listed in the table. At NIH, each person discards 1.04 pounds of trash per day and recycles 1.93 pounds of material. Stanford's recycling efforts last year reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 2,447 metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE), equivalent to taking 1889 cars off the roads a year, and 1,009,626 gallons of gasoline or 48 wagons of coal were conserved.
For example, producing new aluminum from old products, such as recycled cans and aluminum foil, uses 95% less energy than making it from scratch. Recycled steel saves 60% of production energy, recycled newspapers 40%, recycled plastics 70% and recycled glass 40%. In addition, according to National Geographic, a whopping 91% of plastic is not recycled, even though plastic is the biggest enemy of ocean water. The Steel Recycling Institute has discovered that recycling steel saves enough energy to electrically power the equivalent of 18 million homes for a year.
Recycling aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy needed to produce the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source. Stanford reduced the need for 414 tons of iron ore, coal and limestone by recycling more than 288 tons of ferrous scrap. One ton of recycled steel saves 642 kWh of energy, 1.8 barrels of oil, 10.9 million BTUs of energy and 4 cubic yards of landfill space.
