Preview

Do We Live in a Throw Away Society?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
857 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Do We Live in a Throw Away Society?
Do We Live In a Throw Away Society?
There are many discussions that show belief that we do in fact live in a throw away society. There are numerous ways they are trying to prevent that, such as recycling more different varieties of products, and finding out which are most harmful to recycle more. Then there’s also ways around the idea of helping out the environment, but in the long run it doesn’t benefit as much as we think it is. But majority votes that we are a throw away society but there are a lot of different ways to help that. In some neighborhoods, going down the alley you can see the bright blue trash cans and know right away that those are for recycling cans. But how many of those neighborhoods really are there? The communities that do the best with recycling are the ones who work together. So wouldn’t it make sense to work together not only as a community, city or state, but better as a country? Yes, that would be ideal but it doesn’t always work that way. According to Wikipedia, “the United States Environmental Protection Agency oversees a variety of waste issues. These include regulation of hazardous wastes, landfill regulations, and setting recycling goals. More specific recycling legislation is localized through city or state governments. Further regulation is reserved for individual states to create. State regulation falls into two major categories: landfill bans and recycling goals.” (Wikipedia, 2008) So basically we need to start small to go big. All that is needed is participation from the people to make the small changes, big ones. Not many know what differences recycling takes place in our environment. Well, “recycling paper cuts air pollution by about 75%; substituting steel scrap for virgin ore reduces air emissions by 85% and water pollution by 76%.” (El Dorado County, CA-Environmental Management, 2008) So even those daily small things we use like paper can make the biggest difference when they are recycled. And it is not that hard to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Consumers have also begun to recycle more frequently which benefits the planet because its resources are not being consumed at a much higher rate. By recycling simple everyday items, such as glass or plastic, resources can be replenished. The cost of recycling is very economical because everyone profits from it. Landfills are filled with some materials that are not biodegradable and recycling these items reduces not only the amount of waste in the landfills, but also keeps energy consumption and pollution down. For example, recycling the newspaper or any type of paper will prevent…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The sub claim Bandow has about recycling creating more air pollution has little evidence to back it up, but when factories are producing “renewed” items they are using energy that may or may not needed to be used. The author says “For instance, producing paperboard burger containers yields more air and water pollution and consumes more energy than does manufacturing polystyrene clamshells. It takes more water to recycle newsprint than to make it afresh”. The author claims it would be better to make new materials out of commodities that haven’t already been processed in factories or used by people. Are recycled items really beneficial to the environment or simply a “feel good” factor to thinking we are helping?…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Recycling has been a lingering political issue for years. Multiple federal recycling bills have been proposed, and none have come close to being voted into law. Environmentalists argue that the environment isn’t the only thing that benefits from recycling, but the economy benefits from it as well. If this is the case, how come these proposed bills haven't been voted into law?…

    • 1912 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Hidden Life of Garbage

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In this day and age, it is becoming more and more common to find recycling cans at your local restaurants and shopping malls. However, at ShopRite grocery stores there are none of these recycling cans to be found. It is alarming to see the amount of plastic bags, bottles, and papers that are simply thrown away without any thought into it. Every day when I am at work, I see countless amounts of plastic bags thrown away carelessly when in reality there…

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    english annotation

    • 2453 Words
    • 10 Pages

    This is an online article source through a credible agency, the United States Environmental Protection Agency. It very briefly outlines how recycling occurs and the benefits of recycling, including reducing landfills. The purpose of this article was to inform anyone who is new to this field of study and would like to know the general idea. The process is very vaguely outlined and does not go too far in depth as to be understood by nearly any reader. The main ideas are the benefits and the three stages of recycling. The three stages are represented by the triangular arrows and are Collection and Processing, Manufacturing, and Purchasing New Products Made from Recycled Materials. Collection and Processing consists of attaining the material in a variety of ways, including curbside, drop off, and collection agencies and then processing and sorting the materials that can be used for manufacturing. Manufacturing consists of using this material to make new products such as paper towels and aluminum can, with more products emerging annually. The last step that closes…

    • 2453 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 2013 we produced 254 million tons of waste. Of this 254 million tons: we recycled 34%, which isn't a bad number. But of the rest of our waste that ends up in landfills: half could be recycled. That’s 84 million tons of waste that could be reused. So why are we just letting it get buried with the rest of our garbage? Recycling may be expensive and inconvenient in the beginning. But research shows the long term benefits of mandatory recycling programs. These benefits outweigh the initial inconvenience and expense.…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Recycling has been a well known idea for so many years, but now we need it more than ever. Now in the world there are so many problems with the environment like Global Warming, toxic waste, and not to mention not recycling is very costly but recycling reduces the landfill space, helps conserves natural resources, and reduces the production of greenhouse gases . When you recycle you also help save animals so the rims of a six pack of soda doesn’t end up blocking a fish's gills or a plastic bag getting eaten by a turtle and having it choke on the bag. Recycling can also be a group effort where you get a group of people from your community, school, church, job, or just you and your friends so not only your saving the environment but your having fun with people you know while doing it.…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    We become aware of our uniqueness in relationality with others. Cavarero engaged closely with the theme of vulnerability in her book Horrorism. Here Cavarero talks of vulnerability referring often to the Latin term of vulnus. We are inevitably exposed to each other in our vulnerability. For Cavarero, we can choose to act towards the others with care or by inflicting wounds.…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Imagine you and your family going to the beach. You and your kids are so excited to go and swim and get their feet in the cool blue water. But what if when you get there you and your kids are so sad.There's garbage everywhere! Then you see a bird land and falls to the ground from a six pack of plastic around its neck.. Then your whole family's heartbreaks. Nobody likes to be sad or heartbroken that's why everybody should recycle so stuff like that doesn't happen.…

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    If the trash is continuity dumped in a landfill many miles away you just happen to forget about it, however people won’t forget if a landfill just happens to fall next to a home. Well with the growing amount of trash the amount of landfill space is growing smaller and smaller. A portion of the material is burned emitting harmful gasses to the surrounding land. The majority, however, is thrown into a landfill and forgotten. “Liquids that get thrown away will seep through the ground and could harm the soil.” (unknown). When the liquids are thrown away, they can seep into the ground and cause damage to the plants. When this damage is don’t to the plants it also affects the wildlife’s food. Under those circumstances, recycling would be much better for the environment and the…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Individual concern about the environment enhances the effect of the recycling program, but does not overcome the barriers presented by lack of access (Derksen and Gartrell 1993). Using past sociologic studies and retrospective data derived from recycling participation studies and polling figures of cities across the world; the results show that recycling participation is dependent on geographic location. Though, there are many factors within the geographic location that enable the success of a recycling program or inhibit a recycling program such as land fill ability, education in public schools, personal environmental feelings of the citizens and legislation by the geographic location government.…

    • 2604 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Some even say that recycling is able to cancel a big percentage of the harm that we’re causing to our planet. Ok again, recycling is very important but it’s not really going to reduce green-house gas emissions which come mainly from energy use and transportation.…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    There’s always the possibility that the problem is humankind, and the chance that the human race could potentially recognize mistakes, wrongdoings, and backward progress. Moreover, beginning with defining the process of throwing away garbage, simply states that a person gets rid of what they don’t wish to see anymore. Throwing away trash is a quick and effortless way to get trash out of sight. Is easy always the best verdict? Concluding that immeasurable amounts of garbage plague locations, distort humanity, and ravage wildlife; a change is necessary to increase the world’s chance at redemption.…

    • 357 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We need to recycle, stop littering, and accumulate less garbage. How can we start to make these differences, we have to start with laws. For an example in California they banned the use of plastic bags. Just the banning of plastic bags alone in California made an immense difference to the environment. To look at a bigger picture, than just banning plastic bags, we need to consider biodegradable plastics. We use plastic and we’re going to keep on using it, so loosing track of small stray pieces of plastic is inevitable. Biodegradable plastic will help with stray plastic, in that “By the time some accidental piece is lost in nature reaches a gyre, it is completely decomposed in solely organic…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Between 1960 and 1986 the amount of American trash has grown 80% from 87.5mill tons to 157 tons per year, not including the 90 million tons created by industry every year. In 1988 over 70% of the landfills were closed, the US government then had to figure out how we were going to deal with this huge amount of trash each year. The 4 main solutions they came up with were opening more landfills, incineration, shipping out of the country, and oh yeah Recycling. Three out of these four were very bad, both ecologically and ethically. But the fourth one on the other hand was very good, it reduced energy use to make knew products, saved the wilderness by not dumping trash on it, and best of all created basically new products without almost any waist.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics