Imagine This: The Importance of Recycling

Imagine this, the Isle of Wight, 147 square miles of what is often referred to as “outstanding beauty”. 60 miles of coastline and white cliffs, 500 miles of public footpaths and the home of the British Red squirrel. Now imagine all this beauty being destroyed, dug up and demolished for landfill. Currently there is 150 square miles of landfill in the United Kingdom enough to cover the Isle of Wight and its wonderful surroundings. It would be transformed into a stinking cesspit, the thing is though, it can be prevented. With the ever growing population of the UK the demand for waste disposal areas will increase and build up more and more until there are outbreaks of disease or the waste is dumped in the sea where it would kill our fish stocks. Our waste never goes away it stays buried in the ground for hundreds of years until it biodegrades.

Did you know, almost 50% of the waste we throw away can be recycled? We can work together to stop this waste problem from destroying any of our beautiful countryside, its up to us to sort out plastic from paper and paper from glass, just think what it would be like in 100 years time if we don’t take action now. It is all of our responsibilities to recycle, how long does it take to take out the recycling? Two minutes. What burden is it of yours to spend two minutes each day putting glass, paper and plastics into separate bins? None. If everyone did this just think of how much landfill will be saved and not only this there are more good things too. Recycling can save energy as it uses more energy to make something from scratch as it does to recycle it into something else, paper for example uses 70% less energy to recycle it. Recycled goods also have uniqueness, for example old records can be recycled into coasters for drinks or old bottles can be made into interesting glasses. It’s not our job to think of these ideas but it is our job to recycle and benefit from it.

I always hear people moaning about tax rates being raised, well did you know that if everyone recycles even more the tax rates will fall because the government is paid for all of the recycling we do, it’s just a win win situation. Another benefit is that it indirectly decreases global warming, the amount of energy saved from recycling puts less demand on power plants to produce energy and therefore there is less fossil fuels burnt. We must work together and recycle not just for our sakes but for further generations too, we don’t want our children to suffer, just as we don’t want to suffer ourselves, something must be done.

Just to give you an idea of how recycling could benefit us, lets just say everyone here recycled one can every day for a year. Those recycled cans at the end of the year would have saved enough energy to run TV for 33 thousand hours. That is truly astonishing and it is certain that every household could recycle at least 2 or 3 cans a day, just think of how much energy we could save, its unimaginable.

We could save money on packaging too; almost 80% of packaging on average is useless and serves no use to keeping the product fresh. If packaging was bought down to the bare essentials we would save 16% on the cost of our shopping, it may not sound much but saving £16 every time you shop will definitely add up.

And finally, think of the environment. Every day 400 square kilometers of rainforest is being destroyed after a year that’s a patch of rainforest the size of the UK gone. Most of that wood is used to make paper which if we recycle what we have we wouldn’t need, ultimately decreasing the amount of rainforest being destroyed. The same amount of sand is being dredged from our seas each year causing fish to be killed for no reason, just to satisfy our need for glass, concrete and asphalt.

Just think of all the benefits of recycling, together we can make a difference, if everyone does a little bit the overall effect will be much bigger. We are one nation and we should work as one nation to recycle as much as we possibly can.