Should Recycling Be Mandatory?

Should Recycling be Mandatory?

Recycling has been made mandatory in areas of America, mandatory enough that if you don’t comply with the regulations you will be fined. Well that could be one reason as to why you should recycle or not. We have the freedom of choice in America and if any individual feels that they don’t need to then they shouldn’t have to. There are plenty of reasons why we should recycle and if it were to be mandatory it would not only benefit us but the planet as well. Statistically it shows that recycling reduces our landfills and incinerators by reducing the amount of garbage we throw away by 25-50%. Recycling would protect our health as humans and environment because it would remove any harmful substances and pollution from the waste streams, which would be all the wonderful garbage in our communities. I found an interesting statistic that states, “That one quart of motor oil can contaminate one million gallons of water? Yikes! If recycling were to be mandatory it would conserve our natural resources by reducing the need for raw materials, cut down on the trees, it would save energy, and save a tremendous amount of money. We throw away 27 billion glass containers each year and since glass is 100% recyclable it can be used over and over again. The process of making new glass from old glass is very efficient and produces any waste or unwanted byproducts. In the end, recycling should be mandatory and with all these reasons to help back up my point it is very clear that it should be mandatory. We live the United States of America and by constitution we have the freedom of choice. Sure people recycle everyday to try and help by any means possible to conserve our planet but what’s to say that all the recycling is actually being recycled? There are so many landfills that either leave the garbage alone or don’t bother recycling it. That’s energy that can be reused but we don’t choose to do anything with it. There are bigger problems we should be worrying about like CO2 production which involves recycling plastic and paper. We are burying hydrocarbons unburned, putting the carbon back underground. Each bottle not recycled represents a few hydrocarbon molecules that must be dedicated to plastics rather than fuel. In the case of paper, if we don’t recycle it we are using trees to sequester CO2 and burying it back in the ground as paper or cardboard. I bet that this may come to a surprise to some, that once a tree hits their maturity, their growth slows and therefore the rate they sequester CO2 slows. You see, there is more to it then people assume. So no as long as it remains un-mandatory for individuals to recycle then our attention should be elsewhere.