Recycling Speech

Everyone today has heard of how important it is to recycle and most cities offer a recycling program, but what exactly is recycling and how beneficial is it really to us and the environment? Recycling is the process of turning one products useful parts into a new product; this is done to conserve on the consumption of resources, energy, and space used in landfills.

Despite the education and awareness of global warming and the need to conserve Earths precious resources people worldwide continue to live as if there is no limit to our space and to our resources. Even the most conscious minded person who fills their recycle bins each week may not realize the amount of recyclable material that is commonly thrown away in small ways.

The United States is the world’s largest trash producing country at 1,609 pounds of trash per person per year. That’s just about 5% of the world’s population producing about 40% of the world’s waste. In 2006, the United States reached a landmark in its paper recycling efforts with 53.4% of the paper consumed being recovered for recycling. Recycling paper is not enough however; and although the most common recyclable items including glass, plastic, paper and aluminum are largely being sent to recycling centers, the recycling efforts as a whole throughout the world need to increase if we want to see a marked difference in our landfills, resources and global warming.

As of today, Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour, of which less than 1% are recycled. By recycling just one bottle you’re saving enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for 4 hours. And for every ton of plastic that is recycled we save the equivalent of 2 people’s energy use for a year, the amount of water used by 1 person in 2 month’s time and almost 2000 pounds of oil. Odd as it seems there are many people who do not realize that the plastic bottles our water comes in are made using oil. This is the same oil that is used to make gasoline. It's the same oil that is in such high demand and is not an unlimited resource.

Millions of barrels of this oil could be saved if we increase our efforts to recycle aluminum cans. Although they are among the most popular recycled materials and account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months, and the energy required to replace just the aluminum cans wasted in 2001 was equivalent to 16 million barrels of crude oil, enough to meet the electricity needs of all homes in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco and Seattle.

Perhaps where we need to focus a great deal more attention is paper waste. The average American uses 650 pounds of paper each year, and only about half of all paper products are being recycled. It’s as easy as putting your newspaper in the recycle bin instead of the garbage one. In fact, if everyone recycled their newspapers, we could save about 250 million trees each year. Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 7,000 gallons of water, 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.

The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years, save 100 million tons of wood, and absorb hundreds of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year. Most people don’t realize the harm they’re causing just by throwing last semesters notes in the garbage.

The average person throws away about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year. The EPA estimates that 75 percent of it is recyclable, only about 30 percent is actually recycled. Because people haven’t recycled enough in the past, landfills are overflowing. Mount Rumpke is the highest point in Ohio. It is literally a mountain of trash piled 1000 feet high and in a landfill.

Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It’s just like a giant garbage island. It's 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons. And the sad thing is that plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean like this kills as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year!

The rate of the Rain Forests’ being cut down, is a staggering 100 acres per minute! So in the time it takes me to give this speech, 400 maybe 500 acres gone. Most of which could be spared if people would recycle their paper products. In fact if all paper products were recycled it would save over 100 million tons of wood per year.

It’s amazing how many resources we can save, and how much pollution we can prevent by recycling. But people haven’t educated themselves as to how much energy is wasted by just throwing things in the trash, and so don’t think twice about it. A survey was done and 9 out of 10 people surveyed said they would recycle more if it was easier.

The truth of the matter is, it’s ridiculously easy. Just putting your empty soda bottle in the garbage can with the triangle on it, and it protects the Earth and its resources, and us from harmful pollution. Taking just a moment to put your newspaper, soda can and glass spaghetti jar in the recycling bin will save everyone years of environmental harm from production of new materials, over crowded landfills and the depletion of our natural resources. We all live on this Earth, we need to protect it.