Why recycle?

Rubbish, waste, trash...Whatever you prefer to call it, a lot of people don't think about the rubbish they produce; the amount of it, where it goes or the effects it has on our environment. But there are big issues surrounding waste that affect us all.

Rubbish is what people discard because they no longer need or want it. Almost everything we do creates some kind of waste and as a society we are currently producing more waste than ever before. People are consuming more and more of the world's resources and yet we have become a throwaway society, at work and at home. The fact that we produce waste, and get rid of it, matters for the following reasons:

WHEN SOMETHING IS THROWN AWAY we lose the natural resources which have been used to make the product. We lose the energy and the time it has taken to make the product. The majority of resources that we use in manufacturing products cannot be replaced. The use of these resources cannot go on indefinitely - we would and will, run out.

WHEN SOMETHING IS THROWN AWAY we are putting pressure on the environment's ability to cope - in terms of the added environmental impacts associated with using virgin materials to make a similar model to the one we just got rid of, manufacturing and distributing the goods, and in terms of the environmental impacts associated with getting rid of our rubbish.

WHEN SOMETHING IS THROWN AWAY we are failing to see it as a resource. What is waste to one person may not be waste to another. Products can be re used as they are or melted down to produce a new item. Increasingly people are realising that it makes economic sense as well as environmental sense to use waste rather than just throw it away.

The process of using up the earth's natural resources to make products which we then throw away, sometimes a very short time later, is not sustainable - it cannot continue indefinitely.
The way in which we consume materials now affects whether we have a sustainable lifestyle that leaves resources available for future generations to use. As consumers and producers, we are central to the idea of sustainability. At some point we must take control of our actions and take an active step in creating a better future. This requires a change of mindset however, as the products that are widely available to us are often cheap, made from virgin materials and by people living and working in poor conditions. We buy without questioning where they have come from, who made them and if they are sustainable.

We need to think about how we can use fewer resources (get more out of less), how we can make products last for longer (which means we use less and throw less away) and how we can do better things with our so-called 'waste' than throw it away. We need to see waste as a resource.

Before recyling became a household name, most of our waste was sent to landfill; huge holes in the ground that were filled with our unwanted, rotting and, in the case of plastic, never ending supply of rubbish. These are still used but thanks to new legislations, recycling is becoming part of our daily lives. In landfills, our cast-offs from food waste to batteries to clothes to packaging all become toxic. Rotting organic food gives off methane, a greenhouse gas which contributes to climate change, and potentially toxic leachates which seep out of the landfill site and into our ground water sources. Non-organic waste such as cushions, batteries, socks, cotton wool, tin cans and plastic all use chemicals in their production and this produces a toxic cocktail in our landfill sites. To avoid more huge holes being filled with our gas-emitting waste, it is important to take more time thinking about our rubbish; how to live without making so much of it and how to re use the rubbish we do create.