Recycling Information

Below you will find information on different recyclable materials, plus the benefits of recycling.

Paper Information

Paper is the most common thing in a garbage dump. About 40% of an average dump is paper, all of which is recyclable! But, each time a piece of paper is recycled, 20% of the fibers are lost, so it can only be recycled 5 times. When looking for paper products that already are recycled, look for the words, Made from recycled products, Post-Consumer Waste or the recycling symbol. Some grocery stores even allow you to recycle your shopping bags at the store! And you should buy recycled paper. When you use recycled paper instead of new paper, you save 35% of water pollution and 70% of air pollution used in making new paper. Corrugated cardboard is also recyclable, and 9% of an average dump is made of it.

Aluminum Information
*Aluminum fun fact! The walls of an aluminum can are thinner than this | !

The kind of aluminum you will probably be dealing with is aluminum cans. That's right, the thing your Diet Pepsi was in at lunch. It has a very high recycling rate: about 50% of all aluminum cans are recycled. This is partly due to the fact that most recycling programs include cans. One good point about recycling an aluminum can is that it can be recycled again and again and again and again and again without any loss of material.

Plastics Information

About 7% of a dump is plastic. 2-liter pop bottles, bleach bottles, and other plastic containers are all recyclable. To determine if a plastic product is recyclable, look on the bottom. You should see a recycling symbol with a number inside, from 1 to 6. The number tells what kind of plastic it is. The higher the number, the harder it is to recycle. Check with your community recycling plan, if you have one, to see what numbers your city recycles. (Ours recycles #1 and 2.) Recycle your plastic! Plastic is considered the second most valuable element in the recycling system. Even though it's so valuable, only 1% of the plastic disposed of in 1984 was recycled!

Yard Waste and other Biodegradable Materials

Biodegradable means that a substance will decay into organic material, which is most likely soil. An example of biodegradable material is yard waste. Yard waste is leaves, grass, and garden waste. It makes up 18% of a landfill. You may think that's OK because you think it will decay anyway, but it won't! When it mixes with the other things in a dump, it's almost impossible for it to break down. There should be, really, hardly any yard waste in a dump, because you can compost it in your own backyard. It's simple; here's how: Dig a hole in the yard in a place that is not going to be used for something else. You can pile all yard waste, like grass clippings, leaves, twigs, dead flowers, etc. in it. The hole can and should overflow. It will slowly begin to break down. By the end of a year, you might have a layer of rich, black soil in the bottom of the hole. You can put sides on your heap to control it. You could take a trash drum with the bottom cut out and stick it around the hole, or use chicken wire or wooden sides. Turn over your pile once every four days or so. Let it get wet and dry out. Composting is very valuable; it can reduce your yard waste by 60-80%

Why should I recycle when it's easier to throw it out?

There are several reasons why recycling is better than throwing out. First of all, it's not as hard to recycle as you think. Let's say you were at your kitchen table and you just finished a can of pop. Your trash can is probably about as far away from you as your recycling bin (ours is in the garage; yours might be next to the trash can.) It's not really any extra work to wash out the can and put it in your bin. And besides, it's a good thing for our earth if you do that! Another reason to recycle is that is saves money, something which we all value ($)! It's a lot cheaper to use existing materials by melting them down than to go out and find new ones. For example, by recycling that pop can earlier, you saved enough energy to run a TV for three hours straight! So recycling aluminum saves aluminum and energy too! A third reason to recycle is that is saves our natural resources. If you were able to time-warp to the second half of the 21st century, you may find that much of the oil, bauxite (aluminum ore) and trees are almost gone! Would you want your kids living in a world like that? If we can pick up the pace and recycle more, there will be more resources for the future.

Return to Recycling Rules!!