Why Should I Recycle Plastics?

Imagine your weekly grocery shop. Put yourself in the place where you do that shop and mentally walk around the store. Now, as you are doing this, think of all of the items you pick up that are either made from or stored in plastic. When you consider the amount of plastic that is used by domestic and industrial customers in the course of a year, it adds up to a lot. Soda bottles and yogurt pots. Trash bags and detergent bottles. Just about anything you might ever buy for a baby – all of it is either made from or packaged in plastic.

Sooner or later, the containers or the items will become useless and need to be disposed of. In most cases, sooner – and as a result, the average household throws out enough plastic to make up about 12% of all the waste disposed of in the course of a year. That is a truly staggering amount.

If you recycle plastic instead of simply dumping it, it is not just a matter of stopping the plastic from entering landfill and keeping it from degrading the environment. An interesting statistic is that the production of new plastic accounts for 4% of the energy consumed in the United States in the course of a year – which is a lot of energy. If, however, plastic is simply recycled, the amount of energy required is considerably less.

All of this energy costs money to produce, and uses up valuable natural and expensive manufactured resources. Instead of this, why not just recycle? It doesn’t cost you anything and it makes life easier on everyone.