The Importance of Recycling Household Waste
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- 16-10-2021
Why Recycling Household Waste Is Important!
This article explores why recycling household waste is important. We look at the top reasons to recycle household waste including reducing pollution and retaining property value.
Recycling Household Rubbish
Every year in the UK, we throw out a truly staggering amount of solid waste. Everything from plastic bottles and packaging to aluminium cans and even old and unwanted appliances and tools. But when you throw things away, they don't just magically disappear.
They tend to stick around. Either your rubbish is non-recyclable, and it goes in the convenient black bin, and you don't have to really think about it, or it is recyclable, and you have to make a decision.
Do you recycle properly, or do you just throw it in the black bin and forget about it? If you make the former choice, then congratulations. You don't need to read any further as you likely already know the benefits of recycling. You took a few moments of time out of your day and made a thoughtful choice, and for that, we thank you.
If you made the latter choice, then that's ok, it's understandable really. Recycling can be a pain in the backside, depending on where you live and what regulations you have.
It can feel like a waste of time and effort, and really to throw away a single can of coke in the black bin isn't the end of the world.
Is it?
If this is how you think about recycling, then please read on, and hopefully, we can convince you to give a bit more thought to the importance of what you put in your bins.
Benefits of recycling
You have likely learnt in school about how recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions and how recycling is important to help prevent global warming.
Even so, let us explain some of the reasons why recycling is important and how your aluminium cans are better off being used in the manufacturing of new products from recycled materials.
The Earths physical resources are not infinite. Even though they can seem like it at times, products that are not recycled are burned if they can be and discarded into landfills if they are not. This means that when companies make more of those products, they need to draw new raw materials from natural resources.
They will cut down forests and mine metals and do what is necessary to supply the demand for their products, and this entire process will cost them money and deplete the Earths natural resources just a little more.
Recycling those products is another story. Recycling reduces the economic need for companies to produce carbon emissions and contribute to environmental pollution to do their job. When plastics, for example, are saved and recycled, companies that make products using those plastics can buy them as materials to make more of their own products from.
Products made from recycled waste are cheaper and easier for them to produce than extracting and refining their own plastic, which means the product can be sold for cheaper and still turn a profit. Waste products becoming recycled waste reduces the need for Landfills too.
Energy costs are something that companies have to consider when producing and transporting all of their materials and goods.
Without the need for the company to harvest its own metal and refine it and mould it into whatever it needs and all of the logistics that support that process, it can save a lot of energy.
By using less energy, we can burn less fuel and reduce carbon emissions while saving money.
Harvesting and refining raw materials into workable ones is an energy-intensive process. This energy is mostly derived from the burning of fossil fuels which releases millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year.
This pollution doesn't just poison the atmosphere. There is also a lot of waste involved in refining processes that need to be disposed of, and a lot of it goes into the surrounding land and water.
Much of this waste is toxic or otherwise harmful to wildlife and is incredibly hard to clean up.
Top Reasons to Recycle Household Waste
Recycled waste reduces pollution in two ways, first, by not being dumped into landfills and harming the local wildlife; secondly, by allowing companies to source their materials from recycled products.
Recycling reduces the number of raw materials they need and saves energy.
By using recycled materials in the place of raw materials, companies can make a huge difference in the amount of greenhouse gasses they release into the environment.
75% of the rubbish that is currently in landfills is recyclable and does not need to be there. This is a problem because most landfills in the UK are actually running out of space to fill.
As an island nation, the UK doesn't exactly have a lot of free space to place new landfills that don't inconvenience city spaces or residential areas.
Though sorting through all of our current landfills to remove the recyclable goods would be a nightmare and right now cost more than it's worth, but by recycling your household rubbish, you can help by not adding to the existing problem.
Communities that come together and collectively decide to recycle are more valuable on the property market.
By taking the three R's, reduce, reuse, recycle, to heart and performing proper waste management, they help reduce the need for more landfill sites.
Because of this, they don't get a landfill built next to them, and their future view of the countryside is blissfully tip free.
Animals aren't the only ones that suffer from pollution and climate change, but they are usually the first.
All you have to do is search through the news or go online for a little while before you find a story about an animal or group of animals suffering some horrible fate or extinction as a direct result of pollution.
None are more affected than marine animals due to the amount of recyclable plastic, glass and trash we dump into the sea. This recyclable waste that we could use for useful things is little more than an invisible death trap for most sea-dwelling creatures.