What Are the Main Benefits of Recycling?

Most accounts of issues claim that there are a variety of benefits of recycling. “Recycling is the process of converting products back into their constituent raw materials and then reprocessing this raw into new article” (Healey, 1999). People’s desire is limitless, but the resources in the world are not infinite. In daily life, there are so many products that can be seen everywhere, for instance, glass, paper, steel, plastic products and rubber products. Hence, ignoring recycling is a large waste, that means just throwing garbage or disposing of it in landfills which is not a permanent solution. As the impassioned discussion over the issue of recycling comes into the spot light of the world, it has long been asserted that the issue of recycling in modern times is very important. Recycling makes participants feel fine, and is considered by some to be a moral responsibility, which has become a ‘social norm’ (BIEC, 1997). This essay will try to demonstrate three main benefits of recycling including its important role in economies, environment and energy-saving.
Recycling generates substantial economic benefits and it has made a vital contribution to job creation and economic development. A great illustration of it is that recycling helps people save money and creates jobs in waste management and manufacturing industries. Recycling programs cost less to operate than waste collection, land filling and incineration. According to Beck (2001), there are direct impacts and indirect impacts of recycling. In Massachusetts, recycling saves $557 million annual payroll and $3.5 billion revenues, which contributes to rendering roughly $64 million in state tax receipts. Indirect impacts include the diversification of the relevant service businesses such as agents, equipment manufacturers, accounting firms, consultants and office supply companies. In Pennsylvania, approximately 3.5 percent of jobs and appreciation are credited to the recycling and reuse industry. The recycling industry can have an even broader impact. Economic analysis shows that recycling can create three times as much profit per ton as landfill disposal and almost six times as many jobs (McCorquodale, 2006).Recycling is great potential to further improve the quantities of the recovered materials, thereby further enhances the economic benefits.
In addition to providing economic benefits, recycling offers environmental benefits which can influence some things such as global warming, hazardous waste, loss of rain forests, endangered species, acid rain and the ozone layer. In the past decade, it has been common that 95 percent of the people in Australia do the curbside recycling leading to palliating economic impacts on the environment (ABS, 2003).The recovery of a typical mix of recyclable materials significantly reduce pollution resulting in mitigating environmental stress. It is estimated that more than 300 thousand tons of domestic curbside recycling collection in the Sydney Metropolitan Area in 2001 is equivalent to approximately 85 kilograms per capita per year for nearly 25 percent of recovery (NSW, 2005).Regarding the first of these, recycling reduces emissions of the greenhouse gases (e.g. carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons, sequestration) leading to global climate change. There is a growing international awareness of the relation between greenhouse gases and global warming. The rising global temperatures will increase the frequency and seriousness of extreme weather events. For example, the number of blizzards and rainstorms has already increased by 20 percent just in the United States since 1990 which occurred more frequent than an average of every 100 years. On the global scale, the economic losses caused by weather disasters in the 1990s had already surpassed $200 billion which was four times the total losses reported during the 1980s( Flavin,1997). A typical NSW household recycling 3.76 kilograms (net) avoids creating 106 kilograms of CO2 each year. In a statewide, 229,000 tones of CO2 are avoided each year that is equivalent to removing 55,000 cars from the road permanently (NSW, 2005).Secondly, recycling is helpful in reduction or eradication of pollution in the two previous stages of a product development (material extraction and processing) by reducing the need of extraction and processing in virgin materials. Additionally, both operations require energy (i.e., the burning of fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas). When burned, these fuels release pollutants (e.g., sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide) into the air (Miller, 1991).The third important point of recycling is reducing solid wastes and landfills. People send numerous garbage to landfills, as a consequence, landfill space is scarce. A case in point is that when Americans transported nearly 150 million tons (136.08 million metric tons) of garbage to landfills every year, the use of landfills achieved its peak in the 1980s (Hall, 2006). Moreover, a wide variety of chemicals throw into landfills, coupled with decomposed chemical waste and integrated into poisonous leachate. Leachate can remove the landfills and pollute groundwater (Grabianowski, 2008).Finally, recycling can protect the degradation of the earth 's ecosystems and biodiversity because of its reduction in landfills that areas are home of a wide variety of plant and animal species. Due to human activities, animal and plant species became extinct 100 to 1000 times faster than expected (Worldwatch Institute, 1997).
The third important reason for recycling is energy-saving involving delivered electricity, processed heat, mixed energy inputs as well as water savings that improves resource utilization and alleviates the pressure of resource shortage. An illustration of it is that based on Australian Greenhouse Office (2002), a household recycling can save 928 kilowatt hours per year which is equivalent to 15% of a family 's annual electricity demand. Every bit of recycling makes a difference. For example, recycling one year on a campus such as Stanford University can save 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone (National Recycling Coalition c.2009).By substituting scrap materials for the use of trees, metal ores, minerals, oil and other virgin materials, recycling reduces the need for disposal facilities and the pressure to expand forestry and mining production.
In conclusion, this essay has attempted to show three main benefits of recycling on its important role in economies, environment and energy-saving. By converting waste into valuable products, recycling creates jobs, contributes to material production, and significantly increases the value of the entire economy. It is also an important strategy for reducing the environmental impacts of industrial production, mitigating global climate change, lessening the reliance on landfills and incinerators and protecting the degradation of the earth 's ecosystems and biodiversity. Furthermore, recycling improves resource utilization and alleviates the pressure of resource shortage. To all intents and purposes recycling today and tomorrow won 't turn to waste. It meets the fundamental principle of sustainable development which means satisfying the needs of contemporary without endangering the resources of descendants. Therefore, people should recycle now to avoid leaving future generations a depleted natural resource.（1110） References

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